Argonians & The Hist Trees | The Elder Scrolls Podcast #11

[Music] oh maybe we will soon be brothers in the shadow only a bunch muppet can say what is up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to fudge muppet my name is scott i'm here with michael and drew as always and today we are talking all about the argonians so we're gonna go let michael the master of argonians the lover of them take the reigns and we'll start off with some what is an argonian some of their biology let's hear about them let's go explain your favorite race to us mike okay hey you are a marsh friend friend of the swamp brother this episode scott isn't but you are drew i'm the mediator between the two poles of hating argonians and loving don't hate argonians they were just my bottom tier race i'm pretty sure you signed off on them being top five by the end of it but i'm sure we can change your mind today so compromise argonians are basically like humanoid lizard type creatures i guess people they're a race of reptilian lizard folk they live in the southeastern province of black marsh and they're very different to all the other races in tamriel all the playable races especially so a little bit about their biology um besides being reptilian they can also look a bit like fish um they can have fins and stuff there's bird-like features like feathers as you probably know they can swim underwater they've got gills in the back of their ears um and i really wish we saw that in game the swimming like a tadpole or even like an eel by moving a tail side to side i think that would be super cool but basically if you didn't notice all of the inspiration of these different creatures and their aesthetic kind of impact on to creating the argonian they're all egg laying creatures which you may not have noticed like amphibians and fish dinosaurs even right like dinosaur egg yeah and lizards and all of that all that stuff and they're cold-blooded as well although what's really interesting about the argonians is that they have a connection to the sentient histories which we'll talk about more in depth later on in the episode but basically these ancient sentient trees that have seemingly been around forever and kind of give the argonians their soul basically right and they have like a mental telepathic connection with them and the closer you are to the histories the stronger that connection is yeah well like the history like absolutely fundamental in pretty much all aspects of argonian society they're like society their culture their religion and their very biology it determines everything like there have been you know these are from some older law sources but it's a little bit more nuanced and complicated than this but um the idea is that when the hatchlings lick the lick the sap that stimulates certain hormones and things for growth and so on but it can determine how lizard-like they look but i don't know how that works in with sort of more modern understandings when you have all of the different tribes because you have argonians like you'll see argonians in in skyrim for example looking more like raptor-like or the fish-like ones in um oblivion or something like that but really they could fit into different sort of tribes of argonia because if you look in the elder scrolls online we used to only hear about them but there's the naga kur tribe which are like because the naga and the books are described to be like between seven and eight feet tall and these ones aren't so they're like a more average sized ones than they're making boys but but the naga kura these they're small sort of like um what are they called like they're kind of like puffer fish like battery sort of faces and they're just an interesting um group there and they're not actually um i know there was like a warrior culture or something about and how they like to make their um weapons and armor and stuff out of bone and skin of deceased and so on and they're not seen to um kindly by the rest of the argonians but overall there's a lot of stuff with the hissed interaction in determining their their appearances and their biology like there's even we'll get to the ancient stuff later on but there's used to be these ziggurat kind of big stone pyramid structures that um they would often they would house the histories within so that kind of to me gives the sort of indication that like each sort of uh group or tribes of argonians or little mini societies of argonians associated to those particular histories might have different biological implications and that's what forms like the naga looking ones or the xyz all of the rest of them and i think it's it's something we'll talk about more soon but it's fundamental the hist to the argonians is fundamental in what makes them so different to every other race not just because they're beasts you know like the khajiit are a beast folk but there's so many ways you can tie them back to the elves but the hist the idea is that the hist were there when the world was created they were a separate entity from the el nafee who were the ancestors to men and myrrh when they were fighting the hiss were just bystanders and these are not necessarily the ancestors of the the argonians but the creators of them at least so they're completely alien from everyone else on tamriel excuse me yeah and and they also which is interesting you know you look at the kind of anu stuff in involved with like kind of stasis right and everything stemming from there but then the argonians are much more chaotic in their creation and as we'll discuss they they kind of venerate sithis right and even in if you look at the way that they their biology can change because that's one thing about argonians which is super interesting they're very adaptable so some of it is really cool some of it you just think that's like a convenient law thing that he has changed quite often yeah but basically the idea that they're uh an ever-changing form that they can undergo the amount of evolution um that would take you know i don't know how many years but let's just say millions of years but like super super quick with the help of the hist and this kind of they're chaotic they're they're like chaos energy beings really yeah yeah it's kind of like a cheat code you can't really pin them down you know you can say oh that you know they they give birth by hatching but then there's things that hint at the idea of oh wait no the hiss can just be like now you can give birth like a mammal and things like this like yeah they can just get they can just flip things on their head and it's pretty much impossible too comes through the uh mammalian like breasts which is why we have argonian breasts law fact of the day funny thing is actually when they're lusty i'll go i'm pretty sure lost the argonian made is written in um morrowind first so because it's written by crasius curia but um that's ba argonians in that game are just like sort of like lizards like really lizards like they don't have breasts or anything they're just kind of like rap to like walking like lizards which when you see it through that lens like even weird freak yeah yeah 100 100 percent but yeah so his app super important it's it's the other thing i'll say about the argonians in terms of like just base information about them and it's kind of disputed as well but there's this idea that some that aren't born in black marsh have do not have a connection to the hist whereas others just say it's like a weak connection to the hist and that they're all connected it depends who you believe well it's interesting if you if you think about the hist in a very literal sense as their god be being a creator because you know how often like you well at least you know in elder scrolls the races of men but in a lot of other mythologies real world mythologies um gods are typically the creators of things um the the hellstrom i think this idea that these hellstrom ancestor lizards or something like that mm-hmm that's these lizards in black marsh and that's what the histories actually basically uplifted and you know and like you said before gave them their souls and made them into these sentient argonians that we have today so it's kind of uh it's just a sort of interesting way that like it he's literally created them so that idea of like a connection to the hist like a sort of it's inherent you know what i mean in the same way that you'd think like you know sure is inherently connected to men or something like that for sure you know for sure yeah so two things i just want to add while we're in this area of things one is the kind of xenophobic challenges they face second one i've just forgot so let's do one thing at a time the xenophobia so because they're so different because they're born in black marsh they actually grow up with a completely different range of like well a lack of to tamrielic folk like other tamrielic folk facial animations right so it said that the only way you can tell when an argonian is emotional is when they're narrowing their eyes and burying their teeth and i'm not sure if that's just like from the skyrim animation of like being in combat or if it's actually set somewhere but basically it's very hard to relate to another race that's so different in the sense that you can't even tell that they're feeling the same emotions as you right so imagine you're a nord and you meet a high elf and you don't really like this high or for whatever reason you may have right but at least you're like oh they're happy they're sad you know they're sleepy they're this they're that you if you see an argonian they're just so different and you can't really connect with them in the same way especially considering that their language doesn't even have like a past and a future to it it's just all present tense kind of like the closest language to thought it's the same gel it's the same as how you can look at a dog and kind of tell what it's feeling versus looking at a lizard or a crocodile you don't know what's going on in its head because it doesn't animate the same exactly exactly and um yeah i just had a huge mind blank that's all right well i mean like well i was just gonna say like it's kind of a the idea that the law in the law masters archive is that the hist perceived humans and elves and admired their walking legs and clever hands so it's like that that kind of ties into the whole they can just adapt to whatever the history and like oh yeah we'll take some of that we'll take some of that but it's like yeah these really are lizards just kind of mimicking humans and else and that really like kind of blends into the idea at least which i like in the head cannon or so on that that argonians are just basically vessels for the hist to vicariously live through because the history you know they're they're a different form they're bound as trees and they've you know got other things going on but they use the argonians and that you know mind connection to to live through them and sort of you know um yeah exercise their will or protect them i actually i'm just going to chime in because i remembered what i forgot my brain turned back on so i was going to say in terms of them being heaps different as well think about it in in the fact of like they've been known to have birds clean their teeth like yeah that is so strange you know like you may think a khajiit is strange and then you see an argonian having a bird clean their teeth yeah yeah they invented flossing yeah they put bugs in their pillow because they like the feeling of it next to their skin you know they're so alien that even they're like they have moisturizers which sounds a bit interesting but they have all kinds of things but even these moisturizers will damage the skin of other races but it's like good for the argonian skin yes but going hold on hold on hold on going off what you were saying about the like memories and stuff is this idea as well which is really interesting of argonian reincarnation right like there's this idea that when they die their soul kind of travels back to the hist with their memories and then they're kind of born again the soul goes into a new argonian and yeah that's nuts yeah well in in um running with a theme of like strangeness towards um you know from the view of other people in tamriel um we also know that the argonians sort of they have a completely different conception of gender and they are even able to change their sex more fluidly like through these hist ceremonies and licking of the sap and stuff like that so they could be you know male early or on a female later on and they find um they're saying um yeah so they consider them life phases there's another phrase what they call it which is interesting so you know imagine you go and you meet an argonian and you you know it's like okay you can identify them as a as a male and you're like oh you know he's like hey my name's this yadda yadda you talk and so on but then later they come back and there's this sort of female archery that's you know vaguely you are like maybe they look vaguely similar like a like a brother and a sister would or something but then they act as if they know you or someone they do know you and it would just be such a strange experience for you know nords and all of these people someone that have far more binary look at things yeah i think there was also a quest in elder scrolls online where there was some kind of like thing where that happened it was like some love interest story and they were like oh i've changed yeah but like fundamentally like they're so their biology is just so crazy different because even the khajiit who have the probably the second craziest biology you know where they're they vary in size from emphasized cats to like house cats and stuff like that it's still sort of a concrete set in stone thing from when they're born and that's what you are now whereas and i think thematically it sort of fits the changing of um sex and gender and stuff like that for the argonians it fits with their reverence and um for sithus and their sort of ideas of like and like underlying principles of ever changing and don't you know don't fear change and fluidity and stuff like that they're not they don't um seem to have such a incredible grasp on like concepts and it blends into the same thing as their um don't have an obsession with past or future it's all about the present and the changing of song they don't because a lot of a lot of obsession with the past can be translated as like fear of change or or obsession where the future is like oh death really is what it ultimately is when you go deep into the argonian law it's this idea that they fear or did fear at least more in the past which will talk about impairments but even even fear of the future can be seen as this real uh sorry not fear of the future um obsession with future can be seen this like really need to change whereas like the present it's really about enjoying the the now yeah yeah i mean like if if we're tying it back to the fact that the hiss just want to absorb as much experience as possible back into their hive mind then why wouldn't you want people to be as adaptable as possible you know like why you know you can't you don't want people who are obsessed with being remembered and what not it's like no this is all for the greater good you know we're all just putting it back into the hist so why be uh trapped in a certain gender or body shape or anything like that i mean like they realized oh maybe we should be able to wear boots so then we see argonian feet change so that they can wear boots it's like yeah well that means they can go some other places it'd be such a uh it'd be such a work experience to to be an argonian and then if you somehow if that kind of turned out to be the truth and you are just part of this big hive mind you're like nothing but an air but i feel like they've made them sort of culturally accept it now based upon their like you know it's convenient that you know um elements of change and stuff are accepted but um i don't know if it'd be a bit of a like cruel like awakening to realize that you're just this you know work around because um mere glim from the the books doesn't it he has like a vision of like being literally just being a little mindless lizard and then suddenly becoming you know an intelligent argonian so i imagine that's quite a shock to realize it'd be like one of us having a dream about being like you know the first fish to walk on land yeah i think as well like obviously visions and stuff happen in the time that everyone else and you're experiencing super quick but i'm pretty sure as well he experienced like every day of like them being the mindless lizard and it all like happened at once and then it was like oh i'm an argonian like he licked the hisses up and now i have sentience and and all of that yeah so yeah i mean they can change look argonians can change so much that if they go live in caves and stuff far away from the hiss they can like lose the color in their scales and like go all pale and strange like it's not it's not just that they have a like a history and that they have their own set tribe and their set characteristics it's all open to change yeah yeah like they can there's even tribes of argonians that have kind of like translucent kind of see-through scales and stuff yeah i mean there's even winged argonians yes they're unclear whether they're meant literally or not well how else can what or oh metaphorically kind of like wearing because i mean they wear a lot of a lot of their um clothing is decorated because like flying fish or how fins and gills could have give a winged appearance like do you have you remember spider-man have you seen some of the old spiders where it's like the web there's the webbing that like connects between but it does help imagine like a flying fish they could kind of like jump off a cliff and they can't fly but they'll fall slower so they don't have full damage at least like a gliding posture i would think it's more like like a flying fish quite literally like propelling them in the in the water and so on kind of thing you know like sort of jumping out like that's how i i see it because i think like it kind of i don't know man do not make argonians into birds that would be really really maybe well they already have bird-like features yeah yeah but it's it's but it's it's within the realm of how like oh dinosaurs are speculated to have real you know bird-like features or or you know connecting tiles like they were flying dinosaurs yeah but not those i i just think that i i this is just a personal take but i think argonians are far more interesting when they when they get in on the the lizard um amphibious sort of fish-like kind of things i think it makes them more alien and cool and also i think it fits in well with black marsh and ideas that there could be like you know tribes underwater and you know what i mean here's a weird theory for you what if those feathered bird people that topple the pilot meant were just a really strange tribe of argonians that were scattered around tamriel at that point well my idea on this is that you know it's kind of dangerous it's kind of dangerous law because they've set this up with like infinite possibilities but if the idea is that the hist see things in other races and take inspiration from it then part of why why argonians seem to have a bunch of different things not just lizard stuff is that the hiss just like oh yeah the bird people cool they got wings we'll chuck that on our argonians or something like that like they can theoretically just take whatever they want from any race and add it to that i'm not sure but i'm sure it happens like over a slower period of time just to sort of explain how like you would have for example otherwise you would have any given tribe would just have so much genetic variation kind of thing like based on like oh this one has wings this one is this because they see this and they're like i'm going to be born with this they could but we don't have that instead we have clusters of there's the naga or the part true which are toad-like ones or xyz and so there's these different groups that have sort of changed around that it also kind of implies maybe that there is a little bit more individuality among the hist themselves so the hist tree is in particular like like the hist itself isn't one big so it's almost like lots and lots of little hive minds like the argonians are connected to the hist but kind of like witches yeah because when you when you actually study the period of their their old ancient history kind of changing into the modern day kind of cultural beliefs and things like that especially in regards to sithus it's almost like explained or implied that he's disagreed on like the directions things like it did sound like there was like friction almost between different his members another tribe which is super different which i definitely want to mention on the podcast is the sarpa um sorry the sapra winged sorry yes it's the uh the ghost people tribe the vishk lil cell right they have pale white scales and do necromancy but the cool thing about them which i wanted to say was they actually can't give birth or lay eggs at all so they actually go around steal eggs from other tribes and then they can hatch them in their own history but when they hatch the hatchling looks like them like it has the same characteristics becomes one of their own and yeah again it's based on the theme like you see this in the wild you can't turn it into your thing but you see well yeah the egg is being stolen and stuff i mean that's like it really like shows how just absolutely essentially his star but to to that you can it's almost just like this sort of proto-form thing any hatchling like it doesn't really seem to kind of if you were to think about in scientific terms like carry genetic code itself it seems it's taken and then the hist to sap determines where it's going genetically you know what i mean so that's literally what happens yeah so in black marsh when argonians lay eggs they all get taken to these hatching pools right called an uksith or something like that and then the hist as the they're developing in the egg kind of decide what form they're going to take on but also there's this thing about if the hist aren't sorry if the argonian's not meant to hatch it will actually sink back down into the ground and be absorbed again just wasn't destined to be which is really interesting there is some other connections there because i know there was a there was a thing with how they um insist that the they like well i might be getting this right i don't know but they don't have um burials they like to leave the argonians in the wild of black marsh to be reabsorbed by black marsh essentially that goes into the soil and then you can see like the hist you know absorbing the decomposed you know traces of them but basically it's this sort of like uh you know it fits in theme with all of the reincarnation sort of elements before but sort of similar to how like the hatchling going back the egg going back to the ground or so on it's sort of like that yeah you know it does it does get really strange actually if you want to bring up the concept of death for a moment there in each tribe there's a bunch of different members right with different roles and i'm sure it varies from tribe to tribe but there are grave singers right and what they do is they put a grave stake in a dead argonian which is like this giant wooden steak similarly to like what you would kill a vampire with except ma well supposedly a massive one right but it's not round it's kind of like um rectangular for lack of better words like you can write a message on it right and the tales of the argonian and what they achieved and their deeds in their life are written on that then this huge stake is impaled in them to pin them to the bottom of the the marsh all right and the reason that's done as well is so and this law gets a bit weird i'm it could just be her they wanted a different enemy type in elder scrolls online but basically for reasons not fully explained argonians can and i'd like to know what you think of this rise from the dead as zombies with a very generic mmo enemy name called bog blights but they are really interesting if you look them up they're like these zombie argonians with holes in them from where the stake was right yeah so if somebody pulls the stake out they can rise as these zombies and it's not the work of a necromancer it's not some no one put a reanimation spell on them it's something inherent to black marsh probably like everything there involved with the hist that will actually just bring them back you could kind of speculate maybe that it's kind of like if you think about all those decomposing argonians and if you go with the idea that the hist tree there in the histories and black marsh sort of reabsorb their soul or essence through the through the soil in the same way that a tree is nourished by soil um you could maybe sort of speculate that though the bog blights because i'm pretty sure he's in a box that there is very slow soil transference like it seems to stay there or very not a lot of water movement so basically not my expertise anyway i'm pretty sure it's something like that but regardless but the idea is that then the soles kind of get trapped because they can't the the soil or the you know the water's not moving this the earth and soil further somewhere that's accessible by the hist kind of you know what i mean so it kind of gets trapped and then maybe it's like you know confused sort of lost souls that get stuck there or something and then maybe that's why the gravediggers do it to to sort of like the graves punish grave singers is it a burial thing or is it something like where they actually like do it to to hurt an archonian no it's not no no no no it's not done to hurt them at all it's it's like uh they like they put it in with the story of the deceased argonian on it and sing them like a song right like it's maybe so like as a protector kind of thing yeah from from but it's understanding it's just like how other races will do their rights to the dead to stop necromancers being able to raise because because the way it sort of like i mean sounds to me if the bog lights are coming up and getting back in and everything i sort of feel like it might be um they might sing that song and so on but it's almost like a maybe the purpose there is protection of something like basically it's it's cutting them to me it seems like cutting them off from the hist and then their soul comes back as a block uh bog what was it called again bog blight bog but but they also come back in a physical sense yeah as well yeah so i mean the way i see that is kind of like it could just be some kind of swampy parasite yeah that could be that as well i mean one thing i like about the the stakes is um you know even though it has a purpose and you know it's kind of a nice burial right to write their story on there but it kind of encourages argonians to go out and experience a lot of stuff to go and do things because at the end of the day it's all going to be written right there on your gravestake for people to read for you know potentially generations afterwards if they're left there which is kind of cool as well because it you know it achieves the uh the hist's goal of you you know you don't you don't just want one of your argonians just chilling in the swamps doing nothing all his life whereas you know if you've got a gravestake yeah now that that is an interesting concept because there's also like two ways of looking at it because on one hand the hiss don't necessarily need them all or care for them all to do heroic deeds so long as they're you know serving the hist like a lot of argonians will just live in tribes and like you know tend to the histories and and so on um and also if they're not caring about impermanence and they don't understand other cultures fixation on like chronological time and like you know these types of things it's interesting that they would want to incentivize if that's even the reason like um you know them achieving things or it can be more like a library a record of their life or just a ancient right because i feel like generally the sentiment is they're very like the whole in the moment sort of philosophy creates more of a um chill just like just existing kind of thing like there is pleasure in just existing so because if you think about it like ambition is always future oriented focused you're not getting ambitious about your past you're always like okay i'm gonna i'm gonna be this actor or i'm going to be you know a warrior i'm going to do this this this and this but it's always future focused but if they're very if their culture sort of really grinds in that present mindset it's sometimes it would be harder to conjure these big ambitions and if you think about it in history ever since the post-dusk fall period they've been very present and not ambitious really there's been little bits and pieces which we'll talk about i kind of see it as a middle ground like um the you know they're not like monks who've achieved complete ego death they just live in the moment they don't care i feel like inherently based on the fact they had this ancient civilization which we'll talk about there's kind of a there's kind of a mortal desire to like immortalize things and if you can kind of you know the hiss lead them away from that lifestyle these little grave stakes that can probably be carved and written on in in the span of an hour is a good you know is a good replacement for needing to build these grand monuments that survive thousands of years because of course you're going to have like the descent like like some people will you know have traditions that are on either side of the spectrum like not that as a whole like they're just all of these like brain dead hippies that just live in the moment that's what i was gonna get the idea but but there would be variation and obviously because they have like you know extra versus this tribe and they they you know they have their own conflicts they're like uh not human but you know human in that sense of like they have those sort of mortal experiences but i think just the the big cultural undertone of um the the present sort of thinking has what is what's kept them very complacent and like here's a here's a take that it could be perhaps as humans and being more on that like well less argonian side way of thinking maybe we're kind of projecting our own idea of like their deeds and what they did in their life you know maybe they're happy and they're like really like yeah i wanted to say on my stake that i like tended to the history and i was like really good and i like tendered to the eggs and like i was a good person and that's what they want written on it not that like i conquered this and i started a dragon i think that could be a mixture of everything really because i sort of agree with that sentiment more that because they're they're sort of because ambition is a future sort of focus oriented thing if they really do value the present then they might not value those like they value the present moment so that moment when i'm turning to the history or i'm playing with my child or something like that versus sargonian was a good mother and ra and helped raise many hatchlings or something okay now now we're painting my argument in a very weird light like there's only one thing that's valid and it's how many people you killed i guess it would be a different angle for example you could kind of because living in the present moment you've still got a kind of you so for example if you if you're an argonian and you go venturing off to some other land your present experiences are there but i feel like they're sort of it's not going to be like the i'm going to well it can be but you know like that it's not the bretton thing it's not find your hill become a king type staff yeah it's a different sort of uh motivation behind the exploration or or those kinds of ambitions because especially consider this too they're not in on it like when we talk about the hist and the theories about the hists and and if they actually care about the argonians the argonians aren't in on it like they're not sitting there like i'm a memory receptacle and like i'm going to go out there and do this and die so i can like give you his memories they also are and this is the thing that you got to keep in mind is they are still individuals like we meet plenty of argonians who have their own individual sort of you know desires most of them though are outside of um blackmail yeah that's what i was going to say it gets a bit more interesting when you get deep into black yeah and black marsh itself like there's lots of things in there but but even though they had they had like a i guess we can kind of start moving on to this anyway about the the pre-dusk fall so like uh dusk fall for those who don't know is basically the name given to this period or big calamity and downfall of a previous gr not greater necessarily dependency point of view but argonian civilization a more permanent argonian civilization so what they call like zanmir's which basically look like a real world like cigarettes or something or but they're based off sort of like mesoamerican sort of mayan aztec kind of um architecture but they're these um big permanent pyramids basically um stone pyramids that and and we can sort of talk about their culture a bit but the old argonian culture they they cythous has always been an important part of argonian culture but the way they viewed him was different in in those ancient ancient times because they saw sithis as this sort of you know because synthesis is sort of a embodiment of chaos of change and stuff like that and change inherently can you know death is change or or destruction has changed um so they saw him as this big kind of destroyer so they built these pyramids and they tried to make build all of this these structures that are permanent and they tried to you know use blood sacrifices and all of this kind of stuff to appease sithis so that he didn't destroy or like change their civilization because they liked their uh permanence and later on this uh this changes in their view of sithis then becomes a more welcoming one where they welcome the change and the present moment and stuff like that there's this there's this theme i'm not sure how to pronounce it it's either shunatai or shunate but basically means the pain caused by holding on too tightly to that which has come to pass also described as the fear of death and forgetting so now they believe that building stone structures that will endure for centuries is foolish and you know they point to all these other ruins of other societies that have crumbled and fallen apart so they don't really they'll make structures that are much more temporary now in this philosophical kind of perspective like the mud huts and the reed houses and things like that and as i said in the ranking races on the cool law podcast those mud huts sound boring but they look really cool like they almost have these television vibes like they're like a root vegetable almost looking growing out of the ground like very spherical i like them the pre um pre-dusk fall civilization um too while we're um just there it it has some interesting implications because i i think you guys would agree we've kind of roughly there's two sort of theories about uh tamriel rather that that once it was this big one continent and this was called um aldmeris and it got you know the sundering bald maris and then it became like what tamriel is today um but then there's also the ideas where they you know some people either got some of these elves got lost and then they came back so sort of like topple and so on but then some might have stayed there like maybe the dwemer were already there or the snow elves were already there but then there's also a more like i guess i'd call like a more like naturalistic sort of point of view that sort of looks at uh elder scrolls laura's less mythological and a bit more um like a natural process of migrations and evolutions and that kind of thing so it's kind of in in the before ages of elves and men video it talked about like what tamriel might have looked like before elves and men and that's going off the idea that the elves weren't already there so that the bosma weren't already there and as these or whatnot but it kind of like it's interesting to sort of fit in the argonians into that larger picture because uh there's evidence to suggest that those that big zen me that's called just xanami society or pre-dusk fall society the big ancient argonian civilization um did have like quite a vast trade network um what's interesting is there's a there's a uh there's quotes and stuff that sort of allude to the ideas that listen to this so regardless of length elder argonian blades were made from a series of volcanic glass shards set in a beaten bronze channel the prevalence of volcanic glass in so many weapons was quite surprising given that there isn't any known volcanic activity within black marsh itself that suggests the argonians may have regularly ventured into what we now call morrowind now to me that indicates to me that the argonians were there prior to elves for the reason that um i mean well they were definitely there before the climate because the karma would have just started enslaving them um like they did but being able to expand so far into into morrowind and get these resources and some p it depends where you think the dwemer are like whether the dwemer were there at that time or whether they weren't they could be but they can just be chilling underground yeah some lizards run over the top and take some volcanic material and build a zan mural yeah i'm not sure that they would really mind it's also to like you know how you were kind of saying with the birds too it's like because that's another one of the races that were definitely there before topple and so on and if you think of cyrodiil as a jungle jungles i feel would be more hospitable to argonian kind perhaps you know their trade networks and stuff expanded to those bird people or other potential inhabitants of of southern tamriel really as well because i'm pretty sure it wasn't even in the mythology was an elsewhere the northern part that the desert was created at some point right you know true wait as in like in their focus in their focus yeah the idea is that nurny cursed them with yeah the desert biting desert and the same of the forest so if you imagine that this zanmer society is really anciently before that you could kind of maybe elsewhere was more similar to valenwood and jungle cyridil and and all of it was this kind of hot ancient it makes you kind of think of jurassic park kind of like ancient hot earth but like that in their civilization could have spread far further maybe they were it depends if the the khajiit were there or not first but there but uh there's also other you know like there's the lil maleth fit lilma thit little moth is the place lilma fit is the people the vulpine creatures yeah yeah so the other rapper man like little argus but yeah there's just some interesting implications that this advanced society like might have been more fast spread or or at least um connected to versus to the black martial we see today which is very isolated they only have a few argonians go out to other places but it doesn't you know a question i'm curious to hear from both you on because i i really have no idea if there's actually an answer but when did this dusk fall happen like do you think it was more effective times early more effective times um yeah i think well that's what i proposed in that that video is that it was um around well around it could have been around the time topple sort of first saw them but then it was kind of happening like collapsing just because by the time the kaima um come so this is in the merethic era the climate go to to resdayne uh it's been said in law that that um the kaima were enslaving argonians at that point and i and i feel like they weren't wouldn't have been able to do that as easily if it could be a slow collapse but if if they weren't like these sort of different tribes and and you know what i mean easy it was a gradual collapse but i mean you know the the old ma pushed the ancient argonians away basically into black marsh and the chimer enslaved them um well one thing i i think is interesting which to be honest it probably happened after dusk fall anyway but it's kind of cool how when the ayleids the the barceabic aliids um set up the cities of gideon and stormhold um before they were called that anyway but they built these you know beautiful citadels and then eventually just went extinct anyway and their cities just outlived them by thousands of years and you can imagine the argonians looking at that and just being like these idiots you know but maybe they've already had their epiphany by now and if they hadn't which is unlikely then they would have seen that i've been like yeah what are we doing let's you know yeah you can see the folly in it i would put it like pretty early on i think i think like you know it's definitely in the merethic era this this dustful thing i think i think it is completed it's post dusk fall in the merethic era at some point yeah because by the first era there's all the red brahman stuff and the piracy and and this type of thing and it it just makes sense in general with the idea of ziggurats like i think of the kind of mesopotamia mesopotamian ziggurats that were like thousands and thousands of years ago like neolithic times so you imagine this was so ancient that nobody can ever remember you know when the argonians were like this at all not even them like they don't even re like they're not really connected to their own past i mean like there's even theories out there not that i've really subscribed to them but saying that the the people who built the xan mirrors weren't even like argonian in the sense that they are today i i consider them argonian but the fact that those theories can float around yeah yeah it shows you that how kind of old and ancient that history really is it's yeah some interesting implications too because it because with the merethic era we roughly know there's 2 500 years of time there which is a long time you know that's nearly half well no actually it is more than half the entire recorded history because i think that's like 4 500 years or something around there of all the first to fourth eras so it's a long long long period of time like a civilization could easily like rise and fall in that period and then you also have the dawn era which is extra confusing and crazy in time and so on and and there are ideas that the that the hist are actually from another calper and if you think about it like um the dawn era as the both the beginning of the new caliper and the ending of the previous caliper then they being like sort of bystanders of the ul nfa war at that time and all of their stuff was destroyed there there is a quote uh i can't remember something but the idea the idea that there's these 12 worlds of creation and these 12 worlds of creation can be interpreted as 12 previous calpers and the current calper as all calpers sorta are is an amalgamation of all of the previous things like things get left over so like umaril with his divine father from another world river and a previous calper kind of thing or the id there's some ideas around there with red guards and so on but that's another time but then it's you know the hist being from another calpers and existing into the fut into now is um is a is a possibility as well it's not a literal like canon law interpretation kind of thing but it's an interesting um uh implication so it's sort of like when when did the hist get here or or like and then start up society and like we'll evolve these hellstrom ancestor lizards and sort of because you know if the xanami society is is so far long ago in the maratha era like the evolution of these lizards has got to happen before that at some time like what did that happen really quick maybe in the morning or did that actually happen through this big crazy long period in the dawn era i i think that the lizards evolving into argonians would have been quite quick just based on the fact that when the hist wishes to change argonians now it happens fast um you know what i mean but didn't he it wasn't his uh his vision or whatever maybelline's vision or something he experienced all of the yeah all of the days of being just the lizard like not touched by the hist right like normal lizard no no no no no and then licks hissts up right at least from my understanding yeah cause like i said we don't need to have any like the you know real world evolution precedence in the older scrolls like especially where the histories are involved yeah definitely not absolutely but i i guess i guess from uh uh do you more any more points about the zamir culture or speculation they're kind of like sithus worshiping aztecs like even the idea that they do the big like blood sacrifices um on the theater election i mean i mean they had what was really interesting they had these kind of like sithist priests in this priesthood and in elder scrolls online one of the priestesses of sithus makes like a return attempting to claim one of the temples in murkmire which is a lot more contemporary than forever ago and oh they also they also had these crazy relics of great power and and it said that the current argonian and like this is a thing as you were saying they're all individuals still so it's not like oh all i don't know australians are like this like some argonians would be different but there's this idea that they don't really care about the xanmir's in the same way that other societies would be like well like this is you know the colosseum in rome and like all of that it's kind of just like a reminder of the history and that the old race uh the old argonians were foolish for seeing sithis in this way right but one of the things that they have and obviously they don't want people to get their hands off is these ancient argonian relics of great power right one of them is the fangs of sithus which could actually be used for just mass destruction like turning crops to ash and creating undead horrors and all this kind of things um but it consumes the wielder's soul and makes them go mad basically and then there's also the golden skull of bila um which is just like this cursed powerful crazy relic but but basically indiana jones and the crystal skull yeah that's exactly what i was thinking with all the aztec vibes too but there's there's a lot of relics and ancient probably often sithis oriented things that they would want to keep secret and out of the hands of i don't know yeah i mean probably for the best because i'm just imagining like with all these body parts of the gods if like the dwemer are building their new medium and they find out about the teeth of syphilis they just take it and slip it into the numidium like some dentures to make it extra powerful yeah what do you guys think about um i was just thinking about how that the hist might not be able to exert as much influence over so so what i'm trying to say so we know the elves came from the age their idea is so on but that the the general gist is that all of these spirits that helped the illness and so on that helped in the creation of of mundus and so on they uh pretty much just all the elena fey um they lost their power and then they kind of had to result um resort to sorry um procreation and then they sort of so then you've got lots and lots of of people and then those people all have souls and so on so in ways you can say those souls are derivative of of of a larger power sort of like as beloved as above so below kind of thing like a hermetic principle there but but the idea is for the hist you know how they gave the souls but gate to the argonians but gave from what is it actually a derivative of the uh hist themselves like a piece of this that's what i think so as that happens the the hist's actual influence on them because there's all these individual argonian souls that are proliferating and going off and dividing then you might have a sort of maybe they avoid it in part with this sort of reincarnation thing like in in black marsh but but it kind of like it it's dividing their power too much but then the divisions can then sort of have their own will and go their own way you know in a more meaningful um you know way until they die and then come straight back but that's if but for example if they die and this is probably why they encourage them not to is dying outside of of black martial like this is a very physical interpretation or so on but you know how they go like oh i'm far from black marsh i i don't have a connection to the history i have a weak connection either way it's sort of like well maybe your soul might not be able to get back to the hist because the history is still quite a a physically bound entity it seems that's true but i i for me i've always interpreted perhaps you're right because that's also why they might not try and venture so far from the history like let's go on these big wars out because if you go on a war and you have this big like um uh and you all go and die or maybe maybe you can't get back to the hist and then maybe that's why that i think it was what was it called i forgot that who actually said ahead with the argonian invasion but it was sort of like a rise of a faction the answer leo and zalil yeah that sort of faction might actually be a little bit more of a bug of the hist i'm doing it my way let's get revenge kind of thing but but the hiss don't advise that kind of thing and they want them all to come back a black marsh and stay there because they risk losing parts of their soul off in other lands i agree with that the idea they call them back i agree with the idea that they will go back to the hiss no matter where they are i like your theory but i because okay so it goes into the idea that the hist use the argonians as these kind of like memory farms basically so the idea is that the the hist will retain all of the argonians memories and you know get the soul and then it gets reincarnated into another argonian so if you think about it there's if you look at argonian history right like when i made this video are argonians weak they have been as much as i love them absolutely trodden on performed terribly in all military feats like pretty much all of them being enslaved by all these different races and the hiss didn't care but as soon as the daedra calm as soon as the oblivion crisis happens because think about it elves and men can't go to the heart of black marsh and disturb the histories but daedra probably can right suddenly oh let's give the argonian superpowers make them strong fast like ferocious and they charge into the oblivion gates and fight off the daedra right which none of the other races could do effectively and yet all these other races were able to step on the argonians throughout all of the eras of history okay so the idea is that the hist are only looking out for themselves but then you may think why do they let them become slaves and maybe it's because they don't care right but if they but hold on hold on if they cared about losing like argonians surely they would kind of but i just protect them i think it's outside of their capability like if a few argonians get nabbed here or there it's not as but consequences they come back but they don't get literal superpowers they were advanced and so on because we've got to be careful not to do the same thing that people do with a dwemer all the time overstate their powers it's where their law gets dangerous but if you look at things like argonian behemoths which are these giant argonians that are super strong i mean look simply put they were able to fend off the oblivion crisis no other race could do it effectively and argonians had the hero of kovach but i mean look if they could telepathically call back argonians why not just be like hey man you're about to get enslaved come on home but you but that won't always stop them getting killed in the immediacy no no it doesn't but so the theory goes further in that the hist is like a big learning machine right so if you have an argonian slave up in morrowind and he's a television slave and he's i don't know in a cage right the telvani will walk around talking to each other about their secrets of magic and so on they don't care that there's an argonian there but they're here still listening right or there's an argonian beggar in the street and some politician walks past saying uh you know talking about some secrets i think there is got to be a bit of a thing the hist i don't know how active the telepathy kind of absorption kind of thing is because otherwise the argonians are the most overpowered race of all like they will just know everything that's going on not necessarily the hist may know everything that's going on but that's kind of what i'm saying here is that can be the hist's ultimate plan to play the long game they don't necessarily want domination of all of tamriel they don't need it they just want to stay alive i think they just want to well yeah and they can be limited by the physical manifestation of argonians going out there and experiencing life getting memories learning of secrets like this type of thing right so they're not super powered in but i just take over all of tamriel yeah powered in the sense that they can collect information i mean but i still think that's why they don't do the large-scale invasions or anything like that or big amounts of argonines leaving because they would perhaps threaten you losing those souls and the reasons i say it's like you know a lot of their own mythology about about the idea of having to bury them in the soil so they can be reabsorbed by the hist and all of those kinds of things and this real lack they have there's such a focus in in their biology and everything about proximity to the hist that i don't really think that they can just go off and die in atmora and then their soul goes back well it could actually be that it's not about the souls of the hist and like getting their souls back like it's this soul budget like we can send out but that's what i was saying is that it's predicated on the idea that that the hist giving the argonian soul it's a derivative of their own power so they have to give up some of their own power to to us to give a soul to these lizards and so on in the same way that the aedra gave up power to create but but we don't know maybe the the percentage of soul power that they use in all argonians is like 0.5 percent of their total power of like their souls energy if we were called let's also just to put the hist's power in perspective their world it was something that the world was destroyed and the only thing that was left was black marsh they were in the elena fey wars so this is among other elena fey that that i i think they're re i think i interpret the hist as real survivalists and that's all they really care about the argonians are there for means of sort of almost like protection or distraction or so on but no one can actually get into black marsh really and that's why they did call them back and take it so seriously when the oblivion crisis came but i i think that the hist aren't as godlike as they sometimes interpreted to be i think they're a bit more of a mix in between like they are a sentient race they're very very very powerful but they're not like this sort of godlike everything everywhere it's they still have to live within some physical um limitations so i i think you know this kind of comes back to the discussion we were having about their burial rights and the importance of riding on their their stakes or whatever but if the if they can just be sent out as emissaries to die and and absorb the information back to their hist and they're such um creatures that live in the moment then there's really no need for burial riots whereas i've kind of like to me the idea that they have these burial riots is a is a good idea for the hiss to implement into the argonians because it encourages getting the souls back to the roots like it's very specific about putting them you know like burying them in the roots as well like it seems like burial rights would be meaningless it's just in the swamps i think but i still i can still agree with what you're saying like it doesn't make too much of a difference if they're in black marsh they have you know connection to to the hiss but hear me out okay hear me out because i can kind of agree with what you're saying like i agree with you scott that the the hist aren't necessarily like these super duper powerful god like unlimited power things right but they can still just be super selfish and care about themselves and still get the soul back if the argonian dies just because they get a soul back or not may not be the thing that they worry about what they worry about might actually just be keeping the argonians relying on the hist in this symbiotic relationship to have the tree keepers and the sap speakers and the people caring about them and keeping this culture which revolves around almost revering the hist strong because if you just send them everywhere all over tamriel it might not be oh we lose our soul power it might just be the culture that's based around you know supporting the hist supporting us dies you know so in a way as well you could almost say that they don't want to have the argonians fight and take over morrowind or take over elsewhere or be a militant force because they attract attention to themselves if you look at the argonians and all of the races in tamriel like the argonians have all these secret powers all these abilities untapped potential but all the other races look at them as just like oh they're these like silly lizards that we can just destroy and and step on whenever we want no one's going to bother attacking them oh and the center is uninhabitable we can't go there anyway it's like this kind of useless province that we're not really going to sink a whole bunch of resources into getting you know it doesn't matter if argonians get enslaved or die in a war or always lose because it just makes them look weak which could be exactly what the hist want because they don't want to look like a threat if all of the armies of tamriel were like whoa the argonians are this crazy threat like when they team up you know sigic monks all these other hist level power things that all of the other provinces and cultures have because this is what you're saying we don't want to overstate their power all of the other cultures have these powerful things if they were all to team up or just a few of them team up and i don't know assault black marsh the hist would have a problem so it's well within their interest regardless of if they get soul energy back or not to not have the argonians be easy to kill and not really want to send them everywhere to be aggressive if they die whatever we get like suck the memories back and we learn more with the annex eel attacking which we can just sort of blend into attacking um morrowind after the red year like maybe that could be interpreted as a safe choice because it was a well easy thing to do but they still got they've defeated but but my i sort of like you know my explanation at least is like well why didn't they super power up the the argonians who were about to invade morrowind maybe they didn't they still lost a baby i'd like to think that but maybe they um and i i sort of think maybe it's not in the history interest that the annexeal is far more an individualistic sort of patriotic kind of thing i was basically agreeing with this could be that they don't need them to take over the provinces and move the culture away from where the histories are situated yeah and then i was saying so like it can be either thing the the sole reasoning or the don't want to draw attention to self um whatever as to why they don't spread and go elsewhere yeah like you said i really do think they can be like these long game survivalist type creatures um but yeah so i mean we can start i mean is that everything on on that i feel like there's some interesting theories put out there we can um with history um like because we talked about the zamir stuff um but broadly argonian history is if there's some little tidbits here and there but it's pretty much just being quiet and black marsh get you know the outsides get conquered a little bit by some empires like nothing really grand i think um happens except for stopping an akaviri invasion single-handedly [Laughter] but um that's a good meme that's a new meme t-shirt let's make it argonian i want to make scaly boy gang t-shirt no way cringe bro you're gonna wear it you're gonna wear it on the podcast yeah but the anyway so the biggest significant events i guess is is there's that oblivion crisis thing they fared really well against the living crisis because they were all called back and they supposedly like um got buffed up by the hist um and the second thing is after which so really all of their big events happen really quickly but the other thing is attacking morrowind after the red years so the red year is where red mountain basically erupts blows up devastates morrowind got refugees flying and trying to get everywhere and then argonians go well now looks like a good time to get revenge so they get up and they basically wipe out a lot of the deshawn uh plains region and and house dresses holdings which were their main slavers and probably bits of television and so on but they got stopped at mournhold or they sacked one they sucked mournhold they got almost as far as red mountain and then got pushed back well born holds only just sort of below yeah on the map so what are they i think that was the quote somewhere so the interpretation i i think the general idea is that they got they sacked mournhold devastated but then house rhetorian whose territories are in the thing rescued and pushed them back and they continued to have how problems with argonians like argonians even went and just invaded um what to call it solstheim and they went and attacked raven rock um and little like raiders so they maybe there's bits of harassment and so on still going on yeah they're meant to be roaming around the place still by the time of um by the time of skyrim i mean this this invasion the accession wars these were supposedly incited by the thalmor yeah well that's another i think it's rising threat is it volume seven one of them talks about that the foul more incited them and people go why would they want to do that and they say oh you know they they don't have any hold over the argonians whatever hold they had was lost and blah blah blah it could easily just be let's destabilize skyrim even more by sending a bunch of dunma um you know making conditions worse and sending a bunch of refugees there and like just messing around maybe but i think that's that's way too long term because when that happens it's a bit it's a galaxy yeah because um the thalmor habit hadn't even got control of somerset isles by that point you're looking another 15 years ahead or something or 17 years i think the thalmor coup of somerset was 22 and the red year and the argonian invasion is five it's too far before i think it's a maybe but it's a bit of a meme and also i'd like incite the argonians into some big invasion of attacking of dark elves like the dark elves were already going to be flowing in refugees because their whole land just got blown you know blown to ashes um so you would already have done the refugees pouring out just because of red mountain so i really don't well for sure for sure and the argonians don't really need much more of an excuse yeah as well they're being inspired to go for so long yeah yeah i mean look it's um rising threat volume four actually so yeah yeah when morrow pretty sure it's like an off-grinder it's when morrowind and the imperial forces in black marsh were still reeling from the consecutive catastrophes of the oblivion crisis and the destruction of wadenfeld the thalmor inside of the argonians to mount a massive uprising black marsh and southern morrowind were completely lost to the argonians but luckily the thalmor too lost what influence they had over the reptilians so this book's almost saying that the thalmor did have some kind of influence yeah argonians at that point i don't know there could have but you know eh don't believe everything simply i mean simply the idea of a political party in black marsh seems kind of counter-intuitive it's like you know if you've got if you've got the almost tyrannical histories you could call it uh what what what's a political faction really going to achieve except their will yeah they have seen references to kings of argonia and stuff like that during the shuttle scales yeah and i was going to say we need to bring up the shadows yeah it's meant to be overstated i think that was a kirkbride thing saying it's overstated i can't remember exactly but we have to bring up shadow scales where people will never forgive us so um and of shadow scales now obviously the the xanmi law was written later than the shadow scale stuff but now that the the whole shadow scale so a shadow scale is basically an argonian born under the sign of the shadow um gets given to the dark brotherhood or gets trained from birth and given to the dark brotherhood to be an assassin basically um but this connection and it's apparently and it seems like you know like the king of argonia or or whatever the deal is there but there are important people that that encourage this decision and it's interesting that uh sithis you know because it that like they the zanmir society stuff and the more contemporary understanding of sithis it's just a nice sort of connection out that really backs up the shadow scales and the reasoning for it because before like while it was a cool idea in the times of oblivion it's cool but it kind of seems a little like off like a little bit out of nowhere kind of like oh but now you can kind of rationalize it a bit more now that we know a lot more about their love for sithus for sure i think elder scrolls online really added a lot of cool stuff and i know scott you don't like it that a lot of people were argonian fanboys before all this cool yeah my thing is before it's like say if anything it's like oh they're saying like i wasn't um argonians for me before eso for sure were definitely lower like lowest even now they're still not my favorite favorite races but they are a really good rate like there's plenty of interesting stuff to go in there but i just think i think i think you've completely done a 180 on argonians that way i stand by a hundred percent i stand by imperials even over the top like they're their imperials society and and every in their mythology and everything about them is to me more compelling than the arguments the argonians got the interesting like flavor of like the biology and so on um but yeah and it's nice they've done a lot of work to in elder scrolls online to to make them is more interesting is there anything else we want to say about the shadow scales i do know that i don't know the name of the tribe but one of the tribes had perfected some kind of egg hatching basically making them born under the sign of the shadow all the time which i thought was really cool yeah yeah um i think they're kind of like i don't think there's anything else to say but there are a few questions some which might lead to some uh interesting discussions actually so um astable raster says quote from an aylid researcher about the argonian people this physiology i don't know how it's even alive maybe i'm putting on a tin foil hat but could argonians just be simply physical constructs of the histomagical influence now i'm not sure where that's exactly started from i think i feel like it's a like a eso maybe like a flashback or something or maybe it's in a book or something like that so we would have to like perhaps find that source but but let's just assume that that it's all correct and so on um that adds some some interesting sort of take of that if you've got these sort of a lids like maybe they're like you know cutting open an argonian or something and analyzing it how they don't understand how it's like like it's the level of distinction is is really big and like the maybe the hists manipulation of it like i don't know what do you guys think about that i think it falls in line with everything else we're saying about the hist being so integral to argonians i wouldn't surprise me if you know in a sense if they're giving them their souls it is kind of like they're animating their form yeah maybe not with their like you know or lift your arm like this but in the sense that their life force their life energy even though they're cold-blooded is kind of like hissed cultivated i like how even their cold-bloodedness isn't really it's not a thing man it's not really changes depending on wherever they go yeah they go to skyrim and it's sweet yeah and recast um drew did you have any thoughts about that any of the physio i mean yeah you basically just covered it there with the kind of um changing from cold blooded to warm blooded there's a there's a text called on argonians by sarantiel which is if it's not the source he was using it's similar but basically just a scholar just being fascinated by how it works and like wondering why the ultima aren't learning more about his sap at all but it's interesting that nobody has tried to tap this resource other than the argonians or have them well well no no they are argonians still but the blackwood company yeah and they are organized it's a corrupted history and there are other corrupt his there's one tree that's leaking this like daedric amber plasm stuff um yeah you know to scrolls online it is true it's pretty obscure and i think that like the research and i think they want to keep it that way as well yeah another reason not to draw attention to themselves you know it's kind of like in real life where we're like oh my gosh this jellyfish is immortal that lives forever we should study this and everyone goes yeah we should and then they just don't here's another question that's um uh jk rembrandt are the hissed daedric in nature i remember in the infernal city novel the argonian felt a connection to the trees in this pocket realm of the city could be uh could be remembering details wrong but there was a forest he has to protect and lots of cryptic daedric stuff going on cheers lads love the podcasts thank you i was just about to bring that up as well i was going to say the same thing so it's good perfect question i'll take it away take it away i mean not that i necessarily had the answer i was going to ask about it but it is interesting how many in how many little ways they seem to get connected to the daedra i mean for one it's like you know perfectly predicting the oblivion crisis it's like the obvious one but then you have like um little deals with certain histories met talking to princes to seek refuge for example like i can't remember i think it might have been during the dusk fall i really hope i'm right about this i'll double check but a specific history made a deal with molag bao to to escape to his realm at a certain point in history and it ended up just screwing him over because mother battle's like yeah right we're going to milk this tree for everything it's got sounds when you say a certain point in history like the way we just yeah but i'll find exactly what to make sure while you're finding that my take is is that they're separate from the daedra but interact with them like when we were talking about even the idea that different histories can have different um ideas for the directions they want the argonians to be taken in and you know this one makes a deal with molag bao and this one gets corrupted and there's daedric influence put upon it so what do you think about the idea that like so umbriel the big city that sort of spawned from umbra that the tree's there that he felt the connection to it though like like he would like a hissed-like connection to these trees that are daedric in nature entirely like it would like do you reckon maybe it could be either like a sort of because you know how the daedra inherently sort of imitate or like corrupt forms of things and that's why it feels like sort of it feels familiar because it's nothing more if if a history can make a deal with molag bao according to daedrologist drew here who just checked what i said was yeah um and and oh taking me to your realm and these trees have been around forever and daedra have been around pretty much forever why couldn't there have just been histories that somehow ended up in a in a daedric realm it could it could that may be a boring take like maybe maybe um people want a more interesting if you've got any ideas scott um no i think uh i think i think it covers it it's interesting i think people see people could theorycraft a little bit more if they want to make it if they want to make it seem like oh they're daedric in nature i don't think there's because like you know the dealings with molag bell they are hissed are put on the same sort of level as like el nephew like during the illinois walls destroyed a bunch of their land they left with black marshes bystanders in the wars so they're not like they're a sentient sort of race they're closer to a race than sort of this big ethereal sort of force so inherently i feel like because to be daedric in nature anyway is to sort of be you know uh in oblivion and not an ancestor or not related to creation it's sort of a imitation or corruption of creation so maybe whatever created the hist sort of like like there's a question who created the hist but well well i was just going to sorry i was going gonna say like rather than them necessarily being daedric in nature it's rather that they're not aedric in nature because um they you know we know that they existed alongside all of the things happening in the dawn era so you know while the gods were creating mundus creating the the you know the uh all the races of tamriel the hist were doing their own thing so they might not be daedric in nature but they're not really you know they're not at the whim of the age or creating the mundus what do you think created the hist there or do you think that they just always work well because like okay so there's the idea that they were from a previous calper and they've been surviving like you know you know what i mean there's that idea but if we sort of like maybe imagine the first calper or something or because there's even ideas of you know 12 calpers or whatever we work with that could be an endless discussion but let's sort of just get into the idea of what first sort of originates or creates the hist because i don't the way i see it i don't think they're like god level like they're not like fellow adrian maybe they're a type of like uh like the earth bones kind of thing maybe yeah well okay because i mean if we think about it like you know the idea is you have anu and padma at the top and then time and and and the universe is created i'd say i'd kind of put them on the same level as the gods of a furious you know neces like before law khan's trick and the you know i i haven't thought it out well enough to think why there's a section of their world in the mortal realm but i almost feel like they're not only stuck there like perhaps the histories were there before the realm was created and some of it has ended up in the void some of it's ended up in the mortal realm but but it's just hard to place them so yeah i'd almost say they're not daedric or aedric in nature do you think it could have anything to do with sithus i mean they they have a look the argonians will tell you themselves that they don't worship the histories they do all these rituals and stuff and really respect them and i guess venerate them but they're not like worshipping them like gods supposedly their actions may indicate otherwise but they have worshiped and many still do kind of worship sithis and and and have a focus on sithis and the histories even recognize cythus and don't have a problem with it at all an interesting idea there is just that being present in the moment or so like the hist kind of seem like they are in favor of stasis because they want to survive and and not change form and they want to be protected and this is black marsh and it's it's the remnant of our last world and i want to keep it just the same and so it's kind of interesting that that they might recognize citizens hypocrites biggest hypocrites yeah i feel like original argonians maybe maybe what happened is that originally with the argonian civilization that hist did propagate ideas of permanence and stuff like that more but then they re realized the the pitfalls of that and then they changed their mind for the argonian so let's encourage the argonians to be super present stuff like that so they can preserve our permanence not their permanence yeah you can't yeah it's all for the the greater good of the histories who still haven't uh conquered this shunatai concept if you if they're if you shouldn't be scared of impermanence just go impermanent then just let yourself be killed why does it matter a good question here to tie into i guess is my um from my wife left me does the hist actually care about the argonians or are the hiss just using them to keep themselves safe yeah just using them i think i i'm on that side of it i i find them to be and you know what i would be all for in argonian like you know trying to free themselves of the hiss which leads into another question by um logos inderil could an argonian free itself from it hit from the hist and what side effects would be present would their offspring be free from the influence of the hist could they finally evolve further um i don't know it's it's hard to say i feel like the hist is a double-edged sword in the sense that an argonian who cuts themself off from the hist is only going to be disadvantaged but then by staying in connection and serving the hist it is kind of in the long-term sense an entity that doesn't really care about you you know what i mean like they're kind of zoomed either way what does a hatchling look like if it's just born in say skyrim and it just looks like an argonian like this is the thing that it kind of it's inconsistent because they can be born like mammals right not by from eggs but i assume i mean look let's be real none of us have seen in a baby any race baby i don't think in any elder scrolls game uh hatchlings i said this is interesting they can walk like unlike a like a baby that needs to be nurtured and held and put in a cot or whatever it's like they just start walking which is quite convenient i imagine it like when you uh you open the console commands and set the player scale to a miniature version it's exactly proportional just mini and then just grows up like that's just it's easier for the developer diagonal the right hand corner diagonally and just keep scale what if they're just little lizards like just actually like health from ancestor lizards until they have the sap well have you actually looked at what a hellstrom ancestor is it is yeah it's just like a little well not little but four-legged lizard looking thing isn't it quite big kind of like a komodo dragon i guess unless i'm misremembering at least the images i'm looking at it looks big but it meant for for a lizard sorry it's like obviously not uh but imagine that hatchlings might be like a baby one of that and by walk they mean walk on all fours and these little is walking around until they lick the sap and then they sort of start evolving into this argument but they're kind of connected to the sap at least the ones with the the egg pools and stuff are maybe what you're telling me an argonian woman in skyrim like a mammal gives birth to to a non-humanoid form lizard and then breast feeds to it it's not the weirdest thing by the way it wasn't it wasn't this breast feeding his up thing isn't this pete hines and mark nelson confirmed this or something i think that's what you said in your video drew on the argonians yeah it it's been confirmed somewhere but basically it's been rationalized somewhere there and they they give them pacifiers made from hardened hisses up so that they can get it straight away they just need an excuse for argonian titties yeah yeah it's funny that to all of our benefits it's funny that you'd think like oh you know like here's my take on it i don't think it was because you know most people go oh you know just to sexualize them or whatever but like i almost feel like it was oblivion laziness that they didn't want to like change all the armors to flatten them out for a or something like that or yeah if you wanted to sexualize them it's so much easier to just give them yeah exactly the same form yeah whoever's saying that they've been sexualized has probably got some weird tanky sort of things you could do a lot more to sexualize the algorithm then just give them boobs just it's not really enough [Laughter] but um yeah i think well that's all the questions that i that i got i feel like we covered most of the other questions was everything else we covered um yeah i don't know i just think that's a good note to end on yeah i just i just don't just don't don't make them birds please do not go with i'm down with that as well frilled neck lizards man that would be a cool thing to like get some more of those bigger that's one thing i missed in skyrim they they had horns they had feathers but they got rid of all of the like spines and gill and fins look and things they added them back in i can't remember what mod but i've got it on and they look really good they look yeah they should have been there from the start yeah because scott didn't you tweet something essentially saying you prefer the look of them in oblivion yeah because they were far more like to me if you were to say to me that um in the law they go like oh it's harder you know they don't emote the same and they don't animate facially the same and that's why they're harder to understand i can kind of see that way more with the oblivion ones like they look like these creepy fish lizard things they look unnerving whereas one when you see the ones in skyrim they kind of just look like you know dragons without wings and they're quite like to be fair to be fair i prefer them for everyone listening go and look up a daggerfall argonian it looks very similar to the skyrim one in the sense of the dragon like appearance and like like go look it up now both of you if you don't know it off by memory daggerfall argonians definitely look i think while i get what you were saying about the oblivion ones i'll never like the look of oblivion characters in general and i think that applies to argonians too for me male argonians in arena do yeah they look they look like a darker actually it seems like the female argonians in uh daggerfall also had breasts but they didn't in morrowind or is that a i'm pretty sure they kind of did and in morrowind it seemed to like more look like just a flat yeah um more i like i actually like like if you're going more with the raptory dinosaury look like i like morrowind a little bit more like at least i guess the legs change it a lot like just what i'm just saying is try and make him look a little bit more alien like i don't know i wouldn't be as scared i would be uncomfortable talking to an oblivion uh argonian i wouldn't be uncomfortable talking to a sky or marconian if that makes sense you know they kind of when i was when i was researching for this video i wanted to see the differences between argonian feet so i searched skyrim argonian feet and i just got some really weird mods coming up so i didn't even end up seeing what they look like there's just something look as much as i love argonians there's just something seedy about them that attracts some interesting people but yeah at the end of the day it just seems like you know you can justify changes with argonians a lot easier than any other creature because that's the way that his role oh for sure but yeah i think that covers everything it's been a bit of a longer podcast episode this time which is only testament to the argonians being the best race so uh i'm sure if we did a dark elf episode maybe it'll be three hours but i mean you guys all had dark hill for the top of your list yeah we did but let's be let's be real it's going to be longer than the orcs podcast because they're much more interesting yeah the orcs we could have just said their shrek and ended immediately but we needed to make sure it was an hour exactly now you know all right well thanks everyone for watching um we'll have another podcast next week social media links are in the description as is a link to our merch if you want to check that out and help support this podcast and get an awesome fudge muppet mask t and we look forward to noting out with you again very soon good stuff

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 64,118

Rating: 4.9421391 out of 5

Keywords: elder scrolls podcast, elder scrolls lore, skyrim, skyrim lore, rgonians, hist, argonians lore, argonians elder scrolls, black marsh, hist lore, black marsh lore, argonia lore, sithis, sithis lore

Id: VbrmTaXHT44

Length: 86min 38sec (5198 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020