Clavicus Vile & Barbas - Daedric Prince of Trickery & Bargains | The Elder Scrolls Podcast #39

[Music] what is up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the elder scrolls podcast i'm scott here with michael and drew as always and today we are discussing the daedric prince clavicus file which one of you guys would like to take it away start us off this is the epitome of the deal with the devil clavicus vile the prince of trickery and bargains the child god of the morning star this is a daedric prince that tends to love making pacts and definitely is heavily involved in mortal affairs he just isn't going to sit on the sidelines and watch time fly by he wants to get involved make packs with people packs which they will regret and i mean his daedric realm is the fields of regret so you know i wouldn't be making any deals with him or i'd be checking the fine print extremely thoroughly although it does lead me to wonder do many people who make deals with him actually write it down because i feel like most of them are verbal yeah i'd say so so they can be many people there's something about clavicus vile like we know the daedric prince love to meddle with mortals but with clavicus vile something about it it never really feels malevolent or overly malicious to me like even though it often can be there's something about him that it seems like a fascination with mortality and like free will and seeing what these things will do like a kid looking at an ant hill or something like that that's how i feel about clavicus it's a really cool quote that really sums him up nicely about how explains why he's such a social creature and also explains his other component barbus so um pelagius haber basically says this if we accept the premise that clavicus vile and barbus are at least in some sense the same person the natural question is why why would an entity possessing godlike power allow itself to be bifurcated i have a number of hypotheses but my best guess is simply this companionship the life of a prince is one of near total isolation some princes like hermaeus mora and nocturnal appear to revel in this solitude but everything we know of clavicus vile indicates that he is a profoundly social being his love of bartering his willingness to bestow wishes upon those that engage with him his bewitching mask each of these things point to a being that thrives on interaction conversation and play a being so inclined would likely go mad without some companion to speak to argue with and complain about one might even view it as a marriage of sorts albeit an inverted one rather than two becoming one as in the pledge of mara one has become two a paradoxical reversal of the aedric ritual so like you're saying there too like the playfulness of kind of what you're getting he's not it's not necessarily even um you know malicious but it it is in reality but he's just playing and he likes to talk and converse and he likes the trickery with words with the you know playing with words so that he can you know alter the deal perhaps that's part of his charm in a way it seems like it's kind of working on you drew because he can almost feel like if you're smart enough you can rise to the challenge and outwit him and even though you can in some respects there are some elements of it where if you think about it he will just screw you because he wants to for example with sebastian lort even though he gave the roof or axe so that sebastian could you know cure the lycanthropy of his daughter by killing her because she became a werewolf and he didn't like that um he then sends the dragonborn after sebastian lort which you know you could say oh well i would have made it part of the deal that you will never mess with me for the rest of my life but you know he wanted his axe back it was it had nothing to do with um you know like sebastian lort's done the wrong thing yeah there's something about barbus that i i funnily enough i'd actually written down the same quote to mention from the vile truth of barbus text that that scot you just went through before but there's something about barbus that kind of um also it disarms him a bit it and his willingness to i mean you know you can argue how much of it is willing but his willingness to share his power with a subservient like dog with with barbus as his companion is something that you couldn't imagine a lot of princes doing where i think they would be much more hoarding of power and it's definitely more of a game to clavicus than it is to pretty much any other prince yeah and um like there's a perfect example that happens leading up to eso with the kofringi that i think really sums up clavicus quite well because the kofringi were going extinct and there's there's a small tribe left who really don't want that to happen so they turn to clavicus and like please we don't want our people to go extinct so he gives them immortality in the form of like permanent undeath and eventually obviously they kind of get a bit sick of that and then it comes down to the player character to decide whether to remove it from them and have them all be killed or let them continue going on like that so it's like he's kind of fascinated by their mortality and and the willingness to choose between mortality and immortality and how bad it can actually be to have immortality sometimes yeah yeah i feel like i'd still choose to be immortal i think no even knowing all the doubts really knowing all the downsides i think you would just be like all right you know it's just so tempting yeah because you almost need an out you know this is this isn't even related to vile anymore but like if you if you've got the choice for immortality but you cannot escape it at all yeah that's so scary eventually you'll just especially for you you'll just end up floating in space thousands of years yeah i'll pass until you arrive on the next planet but yeah you know um vile's definitely a daedra you don't want to mess with i do like the idea that his deals are fair i don't actually like when he does something seemingly unfair the problem is it's like they're like you go not fair but by the agreement obviously he takes advantage of people who are in desperate situations and it seems like desperate situations lead to the you know the most dodgy deals because people are willing to accept any conditions to get what they need in the moment but i just feel like if the terms and conditions indicate that the mortal he's made a pact with shouldn't get screwed over then they shouldn't yeah but then again that's part of the daydream isn't it that they still will just do what they want when they want if they feel like it well like one of the like one of the best examples are i'll just read the story now over this tale of um availia so the best known story of the mask so the mask of clavicus file tells the tale of availia a noble woman of some renown as a young girl she was grossly disfigured by a spiteful servant availia made a dark deal with clavicus file and received the mask in return so we don't have the specifics yeah because dark deal could mean she did something wrong yeah though the masks though the mask did not change her looks and suddenly she had the respect and admiration of everyone a year and a day after her marriage to a well-connected baron clavicusval reclaimed the mask although pregnant with his child available was banished from the barons household 21 years and one day later avelia's daughter claimed her vengeance by slaying the baron but i kind of get the vibe that she had no idea that the mask was going to be ripped away from her a year and one day after the marriage to this baron because that's you know what i mean like it doesn't seem like a very hyper you want to meet but maybe that was part of the deal because it's quite specific yeah but it's a year and one day after the marriage yeah maybe she said i i want to be i don't know some phrasing like the only thing is i do have a feeling clavicus because we don't want to give him too much moral credit because he does screw people over like the sebastian thing is obviously a cruel thing and like you know what's crueler anyway to like to start with like you can just deny a mortal a wish or give them a wish only to rip it away from them later and watch them fall and screw them over like what's actually more vindictive and what's do you what i mean you know it's like giving someone a million dollars and like helping them out and their life's so great and their family and so on and then like smashing both their legs and stealing all their money you know what i mean well you have to consider as well that when you enter into a pact with clavicus vile you are by default entering into a web of packs that he has made and can continue to make with other people for example and and i mean not that overly would know this but no daedric artifact stays with someone forever like i'd be very wary of that because he's he doesn't have that many art i mean he does have a long list compared to some daedra but you know they have a limited amount of artifacts at least that we know about and they're going to want to hand them out to someone else soon enough but remember too from the people in in the actual world within the law like not ever they don't know like a law keeper knowledge of you know a law you know what i mean like that's what i mean avelia may not know that but it's just kind of like you know when you enter into a into a pact with clavicus file he may make a pact with someone else later saying you know you'll be rewarded with the mask he seems to be able to do that i think saying that it's all a game to clap because is kind of fitting because it he's kind of you know he's sometimes depicted as a kid and he's kind of the kid who loves the game if he's winning and he's enjoying himself but then he'll take the ball away if things start to turn against him so you know yeah it's not always fair but at the same time it's not always quite as malevolent as other people yeah people shouldn't mistake it either like he is still uh somewhat you know egotistical power hungry i guess like in regards to um to umbra but also uh the the triad of daedra in the summer said isles dlc so you know him mephala and nocturnal teaming up and he was going to get a piece of the transparent heart of transparent law which is you know obviously this is all to gain some form of power and you know um he you know impersonate it was him he uh impersonated so the sill didn't um oh no the arch yeah sorry yeah the arch harvest yeah yeah he impersonated him to then um to try and you know get into the to steal the scout in order to get into the clockwork city was it actually vile that impersonated him yeah i remember in the end of the morrowind dlc mission like you it's revealed to be or it could have been being barbarously sorry but i just know that i thought it was barbus anyway you meet him um in general so even though i feel like the initial spit split between clavicus violent barbers like i love the the form of a paradoxical um inversion of the aedric ritual i like that this phrase but um that split was kind of a very like primeval kind of thing that happened to in order to like satisfy his social need and all that but he is still a very like grabby grabby god like he wants power and it is quite an intelligent decision as well isn't it putting half of your power into an entity that ultimately you have full control over but kind of keeps you in check well it's interesting because he kind of like it's kind of like sometimes it seems like he doesn't in the way that papa sometimes when he's not complying with him like you know in the skyrim thing they kind of have differences like obviously like clavicus is like the master but it's almost like what i mean is when they were a joined being i don't think they're the same being as a personality as to when they were split it wasn't just i'm going to split a little bit of barbers off i get kind of the vibe that the personality that makes up barbus was like one part of what makes up clavicus so now you've got clavicus file like the real do you want to mean that's what i think as well yeah yeah and it could have been a but i feel like yeah it can also cause him problems like you know there's multiple instances but imagine if you could there's a champion who who goes against so you know what he wanted to do he wanted the rule um he wanted you to kill sebastian lord um and get the roof relax yeah um and and that kind of thing and he's like oh there you go you get to keep the axe but instead um and but you know he wants sorry clavicus file doesn't want barbers back but then barbus wants to be rejoined and if you convince him you get the um you've got to give up the axe but you get the mask of clavicus file no it's he asks you to kill barbus with the axe i'll kill yeah kill barbers with the axe or whatever but what i'm just saying the ultimate thing is he doesn't want um barbers but in the same way so they kind of seem at odds in the same way as oblivion it's sort of like oh i don't want you to give umbra back to clavicus fire like it's they're at odds do you know what i mean yeah well the split wouldn't be wouldn't make any sense really if if barbus was unable to defy him because then it would be pointless it would just be for appearances as opposed to actually having a not necessarily an equal but somebody to play off you know you can't just decide if if the person you're or the person or barbers the dog you're playing off goes against you on something i'll now just reabsorb him and it's as simple as that you know like part of it is um giving away your power so it is important that that barbus has the ability to go against him it is it is weird because he has free will obviously but he's also kind of a servant and he does try and appease clavicus fire like if you read into the law of it in some ways he's he's written about as a kind of like you know a dog man's best friend yeah um but then in other ways obviously as we've been saying they do have disagreements but a lot of the time you will find the disagreements tend to be what barbus thinks is best um yeah like he's almost like the more rational the more rational he's defying vile to protect him a lot of the times because he thinks he's doing what's best for vile so it's kind of like a the easiest way to phrase it is barbara says he's support support in it even though he's a different thing but there's still like there's that power balance that's off balance right you know club because i'm here i mean in the yes sorry yes in terms of hierarchy but i remember in i think reading one of the law books it says that it's in terms of the actual you know power the spiritual power that was split it was pretty much equal what was that book let's find it because if it is the same one we were just talking about it could sound like that because it's just like oh rather than two becoming one it's one become two but that doesn't necessarily mean equals split 50 50 down the middle because even if that even if that was the case knowing value it would be it'd be like oh i have 51 ownership of the company you know and you've got 49. because i i get the because yeah it's i'm pretty sure it is clavicus fire would have a greater split of the power because you know even splitting off percent of yourself is a massive deal that's a big chunk of your power but yeah um well excuse me we're talking about how you know how much of it is power games and how much of it is fun for vile but that you know there is no doubt um that he's he probably could be much more powerful which you know power's a bit of an arbitrary term talking about the daedra in general but he could be more powerful or more successful if he wasn't so prone to playing the fun games like you know if you look at cyrus the restless going into his realm to rescue his sister's soul and clavicus says you know if if you can successfully answer this riddle i i'll give you the soul back otherwise i get yours as well you know and it's on his home turf he could probably make it a lot worse for cyrus but in the end all he's really got to do is be like it's that classic riddle of the the one brother who always lies and the other one who never lies yeah you know that you kind of learn in primary school so you know he's definitely yeah he definitely can go after power but not always it seems from the skyrim dialogue um it just is restored to his full power when he comes back i don't know if there's anything that says about the half because what the wiki quotes as because the wiki says something about i don't know where was it yeah he's known to store up to half his power so this way you always go check this like this is just for the guy like fans everyone listening like you always gotta you can read it on the wiki but then you've got to look at the source of the wiki the source because they will often you know this is bound with everything everything's going to have a little bit of interpretation on a primary source yeah i mean here's the wiki as well barbus acts as a repository for around half of vials power um yeah and then when you click the source it is the vile truth of barbus by pelagius yeah yeah so like that it's a reasonable assumption but it's not necessarily true if that makes sense like i feel like and the only reason i would lean on more that it's an uneven split of power is just because clavicus file is able to enforce you know to you know barbus is seen as the subordinate and so on it doesn't really you know what i mean what and i mean it's it's kind of a testament to barbus's loyalty in the the more modern history of clavicus vile because we'll talk about umbra a lot more i'm sure soon but um if you imagine that you know just um for the argument's sake uh clavicus vowel has 70 and barbus has 30 of the of the power split and then clavicus file gets screwed over in the creation of umbra you have um vile being really vulnerable theoretically barbus would probably hold more of the prince's overall power after that split but you'd see that because of their roles he'll protect his sick master or his weak master rather than anything potentially sinister hmm you know yeah um because he does talk about his power being weakened in skyrim doesn't he and says something like if he was at full power he could kind of just like click his fingers and um what was it kill something about was it the civil war like the entire population or something there's something massive yeah he says oh that feels much better you forget how nice supreme power feels until you've been stuck in a cave for a few years um but yeah yeah anyway yeah yeah um it definitely wouldn't have been taking taking from barbus's power it would have been clavicus viles when he came to the witch asking her to make him a sword yeah probably you know which is ironic because clavicus vial being the you know the master of the deal or the master of the art of the deal he got screwed over um although he it says he what they kill the witch but it was too late anyway people think that which was shayagorath in disguise which would make sense considering you've always wondered what the source for that was because i hear yeah it's every every time you see neymar aware it does mention that um but yeah she managed to hide it before clavicus could kill her yeah well there shouldn't be many sources on her so there's only one book three tamriel oh jaeger and bergan stuff so and i'm fairly sure yeah that doesn't mention cher gore it does that does yeah maybe it's uh as we talked about in our iceberg podcast some of that monkey truth some theory that just seems so so cool that it fits in and everyone just believes it it doesn't actually get explicitly mentioned no but i think it's more of an umbra creation for skyrim special edition the creation club that's what's linked my biggest pet peeve oh no hold on maybe it's big if true sorry go on i was saying my biggest pet peeve with it with wikis is including creation club as canon drives me nuts yeah i guess you have to though right like do you because it it's like creation club is bethesda even though it's just paid mods but it's not a dlc like the acknowledgement that's modern same way like the dwemer mud crab or like you know the kind of christmas themed one or like you know like if they do it it's kind of like it's you know are they all canon like there's the zombie apocalypse one or something isn't that literally a zelda sword or something yeah like the nintendo switch master sword in in skyrim is not canon you know what i mean yeah maybe i don't know where it's actually to one this has got it's credited as the lord of souls books so it's from the lord of souls right the the the shagorth claim i think i'm sure it is from somewhere that it's not just i mean regardless of the source we could all agree that it's a very likely theory just because garth has the truth to many other daedra before and seems to take great joy in it could have been one of his accords of madness that hasn't been written down see clavicus file's got a few daedric artifacts but i feel like just because the nature of him i feel like he should have plenty of cool ones and even a bigger list just because it kind of you kind of get the you know the rueful acts was created um for the sort of purpose when sebastian law was looking for a solution i feel like he's the kind of person that wants lots of artifacts to kind of create deals and stuff and trading and stuff and so i'll give you this thing if you do this because he has such a limited supply it leads to the situations like availas where he's like well sorry i've only got five things to bargain with i gotta take this one back and start again yeah he's also got the bitter cup a sacred artefact that you you drink from right you sip from the bitter cup and it um i know it gives you a bunch of buffs in morrowind i think but let's have a look what it gives you it permanently increases your highest attribute by 20 that's right and decreases your lowest by 20 and so for someone who's making a min max build that can be pretty good but it doesn't raise anything above a hundred yeah it's kind of the liquid inside is referred to as its nectar you can drink its nectar and the other one which is a cool thing too the the fae falcon um but possibly being a fictional artifact the quill enchanted with the soul of a daedric it so he's enchanted with the soul of a daedric servant of clavicus file named named faith falcon yeah and then it makes you just the best writer of all time um but it manipulates your thoughts as well so one of the people who were using it was driven to suicide um even writing notes with faye falcon like his suicide note with the same quill yeah but um the other obviously so i guess we can sort of just start dumping into um art of jumping into umbra more specifically too do you want to someone want to take that i wanted to talk about the mask of clavicus file oh yeah i guess for some reason i felt like we kind of talked but yeah i did but but it is cool and i found it interesting how you've talked about it before scott but the spelling of mask is kind of similar to like um masquerade but also the thing that used to happen in royal courts like the singing and dancing and stuff yeah it was cold and it's just yeah so there's the masquerade the big ordeal involving singing dancing and acting but there's also the word mask with a q is additionally related to the word um masquerade being um sorry one of its few meanings most contemporary one to act or live under false pretenses which you know is exactly what happens with avalia like she's actually horrifically scarred and the mask was a form of festive courtly entertainment like literally called the mask spelt like with the que that flourished in the 16th and early 17th century europe um though it was developed earlier in italy so it was all you know um it all just ties into the theme that i like and the whole glamour and it's all yeah yeah so it's got the like the double meaning of like you know it's called mask of the queue because it's a mask like quite physically and literally but then also the song and glamorous glamour also masquerading as someone else or as someone you're not i should say so i feel like we've tried a lot of this crown before in the daedric artifact yeah i just remember talking about this but i'm like because i really love the the glamour the word glamour for um for like the enchanting effects are like a like a glamour like you know like like scottish um isn't it the real word is grammar or something isn't it isn't that aren't they related somehow i'm not sure yeah because i think the dev said the uh the inspiration for the mask is from the jim carrey movie the mask yeah which is why it looks so unusual in daggerfall the real inspiration isn't it something like that that's a that's a little little drew tale isn't it henry v's helmet or something like there's this really weird horned helmet potentially i mean a lot of daedric artifacts that are taken from real life historical things which is surprising because you'd think real life things would be quite boring i i do wonder about the mask if when you wear it do people see it you know because well that's one thing about avelia like how is she kissing her husband exactly when they're creating their kids so you know uh uh king henry viii yeah um he his horned helmet it's kind of looks not exactly soon but it's one wacky ass looking helmet i'll put it up on screen but but how do you think the mask worked in terms of like do you have to wear it because let's just say for example there was a big celebration and someone's wearing the mask um if someone like some artist made a painting of that that supper and there's everyone standing around celebrating would the mask be in that painting and then people could look at the painting and not be under the effect of the mask because it's a painting of what the painter was looking at and be like oh why is this queen or this this lady wearing this massive weird ass you know what i mean or does no one see it yeah i mean i i think you actually see it but it's so it's got such a strong enchanting feeling and presence that you just find yourself you know it's just completely alluring and you're and you're do you want to mean it doesn't become weird anymore it's instantly but how could you call like someone beautiful who's wearing it if you can't even see their face like how would you kiss them or touch their face or you know yeah i would say just the charm dude you're under a spell essentially so she was wearing i mean her neck would have been so thick with muscle gains like what she's just wearing this metal helmet 24 7. it could also be something that is that is um that maybe like projects the most like attractive sort of imagine the smell jesus christ but like i mentioned like you can project oh you can't take it off but yeah but i'm just saying a match in the face um you know what you consider the most beautiful person ever is projected is these what's projected to you but someone else sees something different so maybe it is like functional that would be cool do you think that would be cool when we all look at it in game and on the wiki pages and stuff like that do you think we all see a different face whoa whoa what do you what do you see huh out of curiosity what do you see scott a horned mask with a what does the face look like uh with a mustache bro really the the most beautiful sight in the world to you is a what a mustachioed man interesting how about you michael that's it i don't know i think i'm seeing the same thing which is a bit strange oh really okay for me yeah for me it's like a beautiful woman um yeah i don't know whatever well that's interesting by the way what i was talking about there that glamour was originally a scottish alteration of grammar glamour it was um it was this article explains blah blah blah actually you could keep talking for a bit i've actually got to find the full thing i just read the title but they're related the words glamour and grammar um cool story um well for the mask yeah because i think the thing that makes the mask cool is the story of avalia the umbra is there more to say about the mask or should we talk about we can move to umbra the extremely corrupting jet black sword that i just thought was the coolest sword i've ever seen when i first oblivion oh he's got more to say about just real quick do you know how like um original magic and stuff is like strongly related to like words and spells and so on and like even to a degree i guess this is an interesting word you know a spelling of a word yeah when you write it it's like spelling but but when you cast like you know what grammar is but but glamour being related is like casting glamour and enchanting someone or something it's almost like you with a word yeah what's the funny no just you're obsessed with grumps yeah no no it is it is but yes no it's good with what we've got um you know because the the main thing that happens if you ever mess up your grammar there's a certain type of people that you know attack you straight away and they're all just wizards i guess yeah they just you know they're master magicians but um umbra i mean i like with umbre i don't know what it is about the books i like i'll be be honest i haven't read the lord of souls book and the other book um i think infernal city but infernal city but i find they're just so confusing to to fully properly grasp the story of umbra because like obviously it gets passed down between like several um mortals find it and they kind of get corrupted by it become umbra and there's obviously um and then eventually it gets back to clavicus vile but then between the events of oblivion and skyrim things get really weird um which one of you guys can elaborate on if you want was well i mean it cuts off a part of clavicus files realm and and kind of just gets even more powerful and then takes on like a an entity a more humanoid figure this dark being with um what is it eyes like holes into nothing yeah and it's like hiding on the outskirts of of the field of regrets waiting for the ingenium to create a large enough hole to mundus that he can launch the sword through it so that he'd be freed and yeah it's cool and all but like you know you know like glamour was the word related [Laughter] but yeah sores threw off there i'm saying it was confusing enough just destroy the train of thought but yeah the whole ingenium story and then you've got um the frosting the sword through the chest of atrobus who then dives into the ingenium and explodes and then umbra supposedly gets completely destroyed after that except it appears again pretty soon later when a random guy finds it and falls in a hole and breaks both his legs and uh you know that whole story so is that part of the book or is that part that the oh no that creation the creation card yeah lovely yeah thoughts i thought so i'm like yeah that sounds too crucial yeah you know i really wanna i really wanna read those novels but as i'm reading them write notes for every single chapter and then turn them into youtube videos because there are so many people who don't want to read them and if you can just have the infernal city for those who can't be bothered to read it and i explain it in each chapter i say 20 minutes you'll know the whole book yeah i think it'd be really cool yeah the um another i guess i guess we can talk about just to like each of their like uh clavicus files presence in all of the different games which you know more so unfamiliar with some of the early ones but there's a whole daggerfall one it's pretty straightforward you kill a werewolf and you get the mask of clavicus file in return it's nothing much um and his actual quest is the bitter cup in um in morrowind but what i like too is the mask of clavicus vial is also there but it's owned by a necromancer north necromancer called salkfield the raven there's this actually there's a really cool artist and i've forgotten his name but he does do some like he kind of he's like hyper realistic almost like i'm not a pro artist so i don't know what the type of painting's called but it's kind of like a somewhat blurry-ish realistic kind of version of all these morrowind characters and he does one of salkfield the raven um you know he's standing there with a mask it's it's really cool this is the necromancer that you get told to kill by one of these imperials because he's trying to make a good impression on the dark elves right about the empire his view is kind of like the dark elves hate necromancy so go kill this necromancer yeah i mean i can't remember what i just look at the script of what i i said about him um from the don't i'll fear the mask or something i forgot where we titled that video but um yeah i said i do love his name and i wonder if the moniker the raven gives any hints about his past perhaps connection to nocturnal though that could be grasping at straws um regardless the interesting part is what you find on your courts and kill him is oh at the mask yeah i mean on the topic of the bitter cup um i feel like the connection isn't explicitly drawn but it makes a lot of sense that the bitter cup would have something to do with the uh the cyrodiil vampirium order you know we haven't gone over that but there's essentially the order of vampires in cyrodiil who have clavicus violence their patron and it says we owe our successes and social stature to clavicus vile um so it's kind of um insinuated that the idea is that these vampires are in high positions of power inside the empire and then when you look at the um the bitter cup it says only the strongest of the emperor's servants are advised to make covenant with prince clavicus and a war and even them are warned against sipping from the bitter cup and it seems like the bitter cup being kind of a you know like the cup that you drink from to kind of make a like a secret pact with him in the um in the higher-ups of the empire could be related well like part of the reason to the salkfield the raven guy like being a necromancer you're having the most clarifix file you know if you're doing all these disgusting necromancy experiments like everyone will have a better opinion of you if you've just got this enchanting mask same sort of deal like that you kind of get is the why that the cereal vampires are so powerful is because they have all of like you know the um charms and stuff that are given through their patron clavicus vial and all of their uh bits and pieces so it seems like clavicus files got a few i mean i then again the bitter cup could just make you like stronger or faster and less intelligent or something but yeah so it's probably something you might not notice as well like imagine imagine if you drank from the bitter cup and we just got off the morrowind mechanics and you needed to i don't know lift something really heavy and sudden or win a fight and suddenly you're really strong you destroy your opponent you're feeling great but then later you just find that you can't really remember what you something you wanted to remember and it's kind of like your mind fading if you wanted to represent it by something that's not just like an in-game start and suddenly your memory is just really fried or you're just you trying to calculate things is really slow and you're like oh that's why yeah you know i mean i feel like from a law perspective it's just the sort of you know it it gives you some great benefit and then takes away something is all they're trying to translate into gameplay terms with attributes but i feel like in the within the law that there could be a greater you know expansion like you were just saying yeah i see it as just a kind of a a ritualistic item that is just essentially regardless of the context of the pact is just used to kind of um put the official stamp on whatever deal is being made i feel like that that could be a use of the bitter cup that's kind of universal and not tied down into any game mechanics or anything but so every time you make a deal he's like now drink well not necessarily but like um i don't know do you know what i'm getting at when it's kind of like you know almost like a a religious thing like you know drinking the sacred uh the blood of things like that essentially that it can be used for these kind of packs like the cyrodiillum order i think it's a lot more interesting than just drink from this cup and you're a little bit stronger for 20 minutes yeah it but you know who knows we need to learn more about it well that's all that's like you know like we apply generally to all of the um the daedric artifacts is seen through a lore context versus a a gameplay context is very different like you know twenty percent price better prices in skyrim for the most clevicus file is not its the actual you know breadth of its power in in reality you know what i mean or even you know fortifying your personality by 20 points it still doesn't it's just it's the easiest for people to think gameplay is only a representation which is limited by the gameplay systems you know if there isn't an attribute for speed but these boots are supposed to make you super speed or something like that you know what i mean it's the same as the boots of spring hill jack like if you're a character that hasn't invested in you know being agile fast and jumping high and all this you're not going to become some super high jumper because it's plus 50 acrobatics right like the person who doesn't have this super high jumping artifact but has trained in acrobatics will be able to jump higher than you yeah so you know it is just in game i guess we could talk a bit about oh could i just mention i just want this image on the screen asap in red guard um barbus impersonates cyrus and it's the funniest thing you'll ever see yeah i think i have seen it for ya it's this dog next to clavicus vial with cyrus's head but just the graphics of um red guard make it so ridiculous if you just go to barbus on the wiki and scroll to the bottom it's just so ridiculous um yeah that's cursed yeah it is it's one of those like cursed memes but i guess we could talk about the fields of regret a bit which is clavicus files realm um it kind of looks like a tranquil countryside like it looks quite nice but then obviously it ends up being quite eerie um there's like buildings and it looks very different in elder scrolls online if you look at um george's description it just looks a bit different i feel like i liked what red god was trying to present it as a bit more yeah and it's supposed to be populated with scarf and right and often like you know clavicus even kind of represent you know presents himself as a scarf and like kind of creature most of the time yeah and barbus as well barbus has been many things um barbara's has been the creeper the scam if you look at like if you look at the daggerfall sprite for uh clavicus violent barbarism yeah really intimidating like almost like uh it's like he's like as big as or bigger if he was standing on his back legs than clavicus file with like glowing red eyes and horns and stuff like a demonic hound hey people people uh like the occasional um side thing i was just looking at the uh pictures of clavicus file down the bottom and there's a picture of him in as like a shadow kind of figure in in the somerset announcement trailer and it looks really cool and i was just thinking back to like you know oh wouldn't a wouldn't a elder scroll series be really cool but you know how that was talks about there was like rumors flying around about netflix doing an elder scrolls series but if any of them do an elder scrolls they should do it like cgi like just the trailers like they do for elder scrolls online like a big cinematic like that'd be so cool like i could really really vibe that like you know how like back in the day i don't know if you ever saw beowulf the movie where that was all um done with like mocap and cgi yeah it was that was like kind of like the slightly early days of like it was a little bit uncanny valley looking yeah yeah you could see where it was leading and it yeah yeah it does look interesting i mean one thing about the fields of regret i when i especially when i look at the the way it's depicted in red guard i kind of like the idea of it it looking really picturesque and perfect and and and you know you can just imagine getting comfortable and and settling in there but almost like a tranquility lane situation in full out free it's like there's kind of like these deals there should be kind of like it's not quite as nice as it seems and then they're really like slightly unsettling disturbing elements to it that's kind of hot like how i imagined it would be if you were to properly explore at cities and stuff like that yeah but you know but there isn't a great deal i always thought i remembered more of these disturbing elements being written down and i can't seem to source them right now unless it's a different realm i remember something about maybe this the smell like actually like a really disgusting scent or something like that um it could be another round sure yeah it might be i i only really remember the sort of uh rolling hills and scarf and yeah yeah i think that's about uh it is any anything else to say on clavicus file any hot takes i guess the last thing i mean i don't even know if there's much to say about the scarf in other than the fact you know are they they're kind of a relatively simple horned daedric creature like potentially related to the herns but really you only jump to that conclusion because of the horns anyway oh yeah i don't know i found i found it so the reference is the lord of souls novel um it appears as an idyllic countryside dotted with merchant utopias fields of white clovers woodland meadows twisted foliage and odd melted looking places which is starting to get unsettling but then the air smells of both perfume and rotting flesh while the sky is blue with cottony clouds and greenish grey streaks that stay in the atmosphere that's what i that's what i remember yeah okay the mix of perfume but also rotting flesh is really creepy and gross i really think that's a lot of character yeah do you know that uh you know that famous painting whether it's like a kind of a barren landscape but then there's like clocks melting over the branches and stuff like that that's what i imagine when i hear melting places yeah that's pretty cool any hot takes yeah yeah that's it that's cool that's um dolly's painting yeah yeah no hot takes really i i like claviches vile a lot i think it's no surprise that his artifacts tend to be the most interesting as well because they all have interesting stories that relate to mortals um i mean umbra i think we've concluded before that umbra and the mask are the two best yeah two of the top three or four at least did you have any theories on vial and dagon if i did i've now forgotten yeah something about that pairing sounds weirdly familiar about a certain theory this is going to be one of those situations where we've stopped recording the podcast i'm like oh yeah that was a great idea to talk about but yeah no i'm not too sure i'm sure at all i'll come back in another episode that's the good thing about it this is not the last time we talk about clavicus file yeah yeah so ladies and gentlemen we come to the end we will see you in the next episode and remember if it sounds too good to be true it probably is unless it's a glamour

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 47,048

Keywords: skyrim, elder scrolls, elder scrolls lore, skyrim lore, elder scrolls podcast, fudgemuppet, elder scrolls lore podcast, elder scrolls 6

Id: jBXThTs-fUk

Length: 45min 33sec (2733 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021