Skyrim's Missing Villain

hey how's it going guys it's nate here and welcome back to another elder scrolls investigation today we'll be exploring what is definitely one of skyrim's most well known and talked about mysteries that being the question or questions of what was going on at the broomjanar sanctuary and what did the thalmor know okay so if you're unfamiliar with what the broomjinar sanctuary is or any of what i'm talking about don't fret in a moment we'll go over a pretty in-depth summary that should explain it all well enough for even non-elder scrolls players to easily understand but for right now let's just say that there's this tiny unmarked nord ruin that the player can visit in skyrim that allows us to time travel kind of and clearly harbors a strange ancient dragonesque magical power that we're still trying to understand and apparently that the thalmor were trying to secure for themselves chances are if you're a long time fan of the channel you already know what i'm talking about as we've mentioned this place in its associated curiosities before in previous videos however we've never quite had the time to go over everything and assess all the moving parts and implications of this subject and recently some commenters have pointed out some very interesting developments related to this mystery that bethesda's made in the elder scrolls online that thicken the plot even more which we haven't discussed thus today we are finally going to tackle this topic with all of the attention it deserves we'll start off by going over an introduction to the mystery at hand where i'll point out some very important details and then we'll break off into some of the clues the writers have left as well as some interesting information in the game files finally we'll analyze some big related things revealed not too long ago in eso by the time all said and done we will have unraveled a surprisingly twisted hidden narrative that has some major implications for the future of this universe and while admittedly i can't say everything will be a hundred percent solved and confirmed i think we'll have a pretty good idea of what the writers were suggesting and mostly figured it all out anyway without any further ado let's do further and explore skyrim's oddest unmarked location alrighty beginning with the introduction hopefully this will serve to jolt any fuzzy memories and make sure we're all on the same page i remember when i first had this whole concept explained to me i was very confused so we'll be as thorough as possible anyway in skyrim nestled within a mountain range that lies on the border between the holds of hull march and whiterun is an abandoned ancient nord city called brahmjinar though our map refers to it as the labyrinthian for reasons we'll explain in a bit now despite playing no role in the game's main quest line this location is very impressive it's easily the largest ruin of its kind boasting dozens of structures and its own set of walls heck it's bigger than the nearby inhabited town of morthal not to mention the views we can get here are unparalleled the reason braum jannar is so big according to various in-game books is that it used to be the very capital of skyrim itself well maybe kind of you know what pause lore time so long ago and i mean long ago like thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of years in the past the nords of skyrim were ruled not by a human king or emperor but instead by dragons yes these winged beasts once had domain over this region's people and in fact alduin the main antagonist of the elder scrolls v was the leader of aldoba's back then while these creatures certainly enjoyed the power they had they weren't really all that interested in actually running the society they controlled they didn't want to waste their time collecting taxes and creating laws or settling disputes between citizens no no that was beneath them so the dragons picked out a tiny group of the most loyal dedicated men they could find people they trusted would never betray them and put them in charge of managing everyone else these hand-picked nords would become known as dragon priests and they were effectively free to rule the realm however they pleased so long as their winged bosses were happy with their performance anyway we call this organization of dragons and their collaborating human priests the dragon cult and here this place bramjanara was its capital of course this wouldn't last forever as roughly 4 000 years ago the dragon cult was destroyed by its revolting subjects i guess the humans finally got sick of being told what to do by creatures that didn't even have opposable thumbs and by 139 of the first era most dragons and the priests were dead brahm janar was abandoned and the victorious nords founded the new kingdom of skyrim which exists in some capacity to this very day though rumor has it that not every dragon priest died and it's said some secretly evaded death all this time thanks to their own magical power and harvested souls of the innocent but those are just rumors okay well lore time over point is this place brahmjanar was once the province's most important metropolis and with a backstory like that you better believe it's harboring some secrets at the center of the city is a tiny building which doesn't look super remarkable from a distance but inside you'll find an odd scene a skeleton lies next to a wooden mask slumped against some sort of altar with busts on it what happened here a treasure hunt gone wrong perhaps a bandit attack well also on the floor here is a note titled higher thugs missive and well i'll just read it to you quote it seemed like an easy enough job graz and me done plenty like it before some chimless breton wants bodyguards for a trip into the mountains fine easy clink for us he goes on about this twice forsaken mask of his the whole way of course got a pretty good laugh when graz snatched it and put it on her face he threatened to fire us for that one not smart out here on your own he realized that fast and shut up about not paying so we get here he thumbs through some papers and mutters to himself never mind that me and graz had to cut through 10 stink controls to get him here and without so much as a warning poof he puts the mask on and vanished could have put my hands on his throat one moment the next he's not so much as thin air well after a while we didn't know what to do and graz picks up her gear to head home when he poops back that mask in his hand begs us not to leave says he needs us to wait this is what he's paying us for then he puts the mask back on his sorry face and he's gone again i'd seen cloaks do invisibility before but a few swings in my fist proved he wasn't pulling that one nothing there to hit he shows up again tells us he needs more time has to figure something about other masks and vanishes again that was yesterday and i'm done twiddling with my thumbs and writing letters to myself we are leaving come sunrise and if he shows up again i promise azora i'm putting this dagger through his chest to keep him in one place we'll pull more loot off him dead than he could have paid alive but not that mask that cursed thing can stay and rot with him in the trolls right here end quote ah so this kind of explains it the author of our letter was a guard hired to help some shady breton and his mask make the journey here to this very building we're standing in when they arrived the breton put on the mask and it disappeared which greatly angered said guard so much so that he murdered the breton to death when he came back geez talk about poor customer service hope he got a bad yelp review anyway that wooden mask is still here and when we put it on we'll immediately be teleported to an alternate version of this room that appears new and less run down it almost feels like we've gone back in time to when bramjanar was still populated this is where the breton must have disappeared to sadly we can't leave the room and explore the past like marty mcfly or anything you're stuck here and the only way out is to just take the mask off we can however interact with that altar though now okay before we go any further let's pause right here and take another minute to point something out and explain a very important concept this wooden mask that may or may not have just given us delorean powers is obviously a dragon priest mask we've already explained who the dragon priests were they were the humans that governed in the dovah's name long ago no need to repeat that but something i didn't mention was that the dragons gave every single one of their priests a unique customized mask in exchange for their service that symbolized their status which honestly is sort of sweet this is one of those every mask had a one-of-a-kind enchantment that granted the wearer some type of power importantly priests would name their masks after themselves so hypothetically say my name is bob i would name my mask bob 2 can you tell where i'm going with this in vanilla elder scrolls 5 there are a total of 8 named living dragon priests still alive scattered across the world some are in certain tombs others will meet along the way in certain quests and every one of those eight will drop their own special mask after they've been slain in battle by the dragonborn with their name attached for example the priest crosses will always hang out around shear point hollow and when you defeat him you can loot his mask krosus from his inventory its enchantment offers a 20 bonus to lock picking archery and alchemy when equipped defeat otar the mad and get his mask otar which grants the wearer 30 resistance to fire frost and or shock magic you get the idea this wooden mask is special though because while it clearly has a unique enchantment time travel it doesn't have a dragon priest name it's just known as the wooden mask why is that well this is one of our many million dollar questions and we'll get back to it in just a second for now let's just continue talking about what we can do while we're in this wacky time travel dimension frankly the only thing here that matters as i alluded to earlier is that altar because in this version of the building we can interact with it and the shrine will demand that we place any dragon priest masks we have in our inventory on it with the exception of that wooden one we don't need to give it that one just any of the eight we could loot off of the game's vanilla dragon priests if you do have all eight if you've killed all white priests and taken all of their helmets and placed them on the shrine a mechanism will trigger and the altar will reward the player by giving you a brand new 9th or i guess 10th if we're counting the wooden one dragon priest mask this bad boy is called canaric and it boasts an especially menacing appearance sporting a unique color scheme a unique shape and tusks furthermore more importantly it arguably offers the best enchantment of all allowing the wearer to receive a massive hp boost whenever your health bar falls below 15 percent once you picked it up simply take off the wooden mask and now you'll have kenarik in the real world ready for use now okay this is a great reward and none of what we've done to earn it is tied to any quests at all well i mean certain dragon priest masks can only be encountered in certain quests so to get all eight we do need to finish quite a few missions but there are no specific quests telling us to go here nor are there any objective markers this entire secret time travel room and the canary and wooden masks are all things that we can only find on our own or with the help of one of these videos the big question here though is which dragon priest did the canaric mask belong to remember every mask was named after its owner and in the same vein again who did the wooden mask belong to complicating matters even further as i suggested at the beginning of this video the thalmor seem to have had some idea of the canaric and or wooden masks and have been pursuing them in a limited capacity probably you see in the rift there's a large ancient nord ruin called pharrell host sitting high in some mountains when the player arrives there we'll find a high elven man named captain valmir sitting outside alone by a fire velmir will be posing as a captain of whichever civil war faction the player has chosen to side with if you have yet to pick a side in the civil war he'll simply base his faction off of whether or not the player sided with hadvar the imperial or rail off the stormcloak when escaping helgen velmir will inform the player that in order to further the civil war cause he needs you to run inside for relhost kill the dragon priest inside named regat and bring its mask back to him once you've done so he promises you some coin and a promotion in whichever army you're a part of now clearly this gentleman is being very deceptive he's not a captain at all but instead a secret falmore operative and once you've gone through the dungeon gotten the mask and have come back out you'll find that he's already talking to another soldier feeding them the same lie asking that they do the same thing when he realizes that you've caught him red-handed filter hostile and attack on valmir's body is a letter titled orders it reads as follows quote you will proceed to the ruins of pharrell host to retrieve the mask from the dragon cult there if you are discovered impersonate an officer it is unlikely that anyone from skyrim will be clever enough to see through the disguise once you have obtained the mask bring it back to the labyrinthian end quote aha so the alder murray dominion seems to have at least known something about the broomjanar sanctuary they seem to have at least known that they needed to bring dragon priest masks there though it's unclear exactly how in-depth their knowledge was furthermore many have argued that perhaps that dead breton who brought that wooden mask to the sanctuary was also working on behalf of the thalmora though personally i think that's unlikely remember the breton hired two random private mercenaries there's no way the thalmor would have trusted two goons to escort one of their agents they would have sent some of their own men so that guy was probably acting on his own too either way though what could the dominion have known about this mask and what were their plans to do with it how could it have helped further their cause all it does for us is restore health whenever it gets low i don't see why they would have placed such a tremendous value on it well canonic does have another power you see according to the mask's description when canaric is worn if our health gets low it has the chance to heal the wearer and damage nearby enemies that's it doesn't seem very useful however what the mask's description doesn't tell us is that when our health falls below 15 aside from just getting healed there's a three percent chance it might summon a quote-unquote spectral dragon priest to the battlefield to aid the player for 60 seconds it's not anything tremendous but kenarik obviously has the power to summon dragon priests to the mortal realm or at least some in their spectral shades sure we can only do it for 60 seconds but maybe that's just a gameplay limitation maybe it's possible to summon more than just one for a very very long time and the thalmor could have used that to their advantage as for how the elves could have known about kenarik well that inquiry is a little bit more difficult to answer because the events of the elder scrolls v very strongly emphasize that the dominion doesn't know much about the dragons or the dragon cults at all in fact during the mission diplomatic immunity when the player is sent to infiltrate a thalmor embassy we can read through numerous internal reports by the organization and in them they admit to not really understanding why the dragons are back and being just as clueless as everybody else so who knows how they could learn about this another very unique quality about gennarock that i haven't brought up yet is that unlike all the other dragon priest masks we don't know what it's made out of you see in the case of the other eight or maybe nine masks we can tell what material they were made of based off of which one of our smithing perks they interact with and what materials are needed to temper them so for example nacarin is made out of ebony otar is made out of bronze moroki's mask is made of moonstone but kenarik is a little bit weird it interacts with our daedric smithing perk which is really ominous yet we temper it with golden ingots which is really weird because genaric is the only piece of armor or real armor in the entire game that golden ingots can be used to temper their only other purpose is to be sold or used in pieces of jewelry like rings necklaces and circlets furthermore kenarik's armor rating is shockingly high it's the highest of any mask at a whopping 24 points you see where i'm going with this gold shouldn't be that strong no matter what now the good news is there is another way we can tell what the dragon priest masks were made out of by looking at their editor ids accessible in skyrim's creation kit or through console commands this literally will just give away their base material for example the editor id for morocco's mask is quote armor dragon priest mask moonstone helmet 0-1 so there you go right there you can tell morocco's helmet is made out of moonstone the editor id for otar's helmet is armor dragon priest mask bronze helmet zero one that one's bronze however canaric is weird its editor id is simply armor dragon priest mask ultra helmet zero one it doesn't tell us what it's made out of this is the only one that behaves that way so it seems bethesda did this on purpose ugh this is a lot let's take a step back and consolidate our info we know that the thalmor were interested in kenarik we suspect that whatever organization the breton was from was also interested we know the dragon cult thought the mask was so special it shouldn't have been accessed without the consent of their eight skyrim members and now we know the devs are intentionally trying to hide whatever material was used to forge the tusky thing though it may have been gold or daedric related this isn't anywhere close enough to identify who exactly kenarik belonged to but we can start to consider potential candidates so let's do that and then we'll move into what eso has to say mirak feels like an almost perfect fit the current champion of hermaeus mora and primary antagonist of the dragonborn dlc this man was the first ever dragonborn the first human born with the soul of a dovah and he was a dragon priest for much of his life you probably know the story from here sometime in the merethic era he eventually got so power hungry after his ego and the daedric god hermaeus mora got to him that he attempted to overthrow the dragons and take over the world for himself but was defeated in a very close fight he was just about to be killed in battle when maura intervened to pluck him out of the mortal realm and moved mirak to his plane of oblivion where the man's been ever since kenarik could have been mirak's old mask that the dragon cult somehow secured after his defeat knowing how strong he was the organization could have decided that no one was to access this piece of apparel unless the group decided unanimously this would also serve to explain kenarik's daedric ties and its name warlord its ability to rapidly boost the wearer's hp whenever it gets too low could even go so far as to allude to the last minute escape that was made by mirak hm all in all this guy's a very very strong candidate at the same time though we have some pretty good reasons to doubt mirec's connection to the tusked helm like the guy already had his own mask with way different features mirac's current mask has tentacle motifs its enchantment increases your magicka by 40 to 70 points and has nothing to do with healing did he just make a totally new mask that was nothing like his original while an apocrypha or is this just a distorted one of the same one he's worn all along at the opposite end of the spectrum veylock the jailer offers a compelling case of his own he is the dragon priest that personally defeated mirak in single combat during his whole revolt and waylock is largely credited by skull historians for saving the world from tentacled tyranny we can come across this priest's tomb on the island of solstein in dlc4 he's very hostile to the player so keep your distance however you'll notice that he's the only dragonlord in the game that isn't wearing a mask that has to be a huge clue right there's a single mask in the world named kenarik that we can find without a dragon priest owner and veylock just so happens to be the only dragon priest missing his mask since he was the man who led the fight against mirak and ultimately save the day he would have held a high rank in society if not the highest rank and a helm that translates to warlord would have been a good match but if the tusked item was velox why wasn't he buried with it like everyone else why did the order choose to secure it in this way a sign of respect were they afraid of its power finally if you're willing to put on a tim foil hat and i promised last one then we'll talk about what eso reveals yeast gramor is another possibility hear me out i tell the story of easter more like twice a month at least but just in case you're unacquainted nords aren't true natives to tamriel their original homeland is a mysterious landmass north of the continent called atmora tens of thousands of years ago these nords started sailing down and arriving on the shores of skyrim from there now at this same point in time a race of elves called the snow elves were already here but for a while the two peoples just coexisted fine long story short peace was not meant to last and a war broke out between the men and mirror and this dude named yisgrimora came from atmora to skyrim with 500 of the best warriors he could find and he and his men or companions quickly drove the snow elves to extinction in a brutal military campaign and claim this province in the name of the nords today he's honored as one of the greatest men to have ever lived and a model for all positive virtues and easter more was totally working with the dragon cults even if everybody forgot or pretends he didn't cause at mora at the time period in which he was coming from it was already ruled by the dragon cult and when niskaramore arrived following his conquests and everything he never declared himself king in fact he seems to have just let the dragon cult start to take over almost as if he was cool with that we know for a fact that by the time euskramor passed away the dc was in full control of the region so it seems fair to say that the man was probably working with them if you want more evidence the tomb of ysgramor's son jingle contains a lot of dragon-esque memorabilia there are dragon cult motifs on the walls dragon claws laying all over the place and when you finally do face yingle himself well normally he'll appear as a spectral skeleton if the player is a high enough rank he'll be a spectral dragon priest instead jingle's the only character that this happens with by the way the only other speckled dragon priest in the game is the one we can summon with the mask so if eastgrimor wasn't a dragon priest or didn't worship the dragons his son definitely did oh yeah and there are a couple of dragon priest daggers in yeesgremore's own personal tomb though there aren't the same dragon priest motives all over the place those are replaced with icons of kind and shore and the nordic totem gods could kunark have been yeesgremore's own mask and the cult is simply preserving it due to its historical significance yiskamor was definitely a warlord so there's that oh well whether or not you found any of those three candidates particularly plausible is up to you but now let's jump into what the elder scrolls online reveals because there is some pretty big info here starting with something small literally in the elder scrolls online when the player is looting various containers it's possible random named treasure items will appear in there for you to loot often times these items have a little bit of significance in relation to the universe's lore or funny descriptions one item we can randomly get when looting containers is called the depleted bromgennar stone its description reads quote once capable of returning its bearer to the ancient capital of skyrim it's now only good for pointing toward the labyrinthian end quote it sells for 250 gold and you can't do anything with it but hey apparently the dragon cult had access to rocks that would teleport them back to their capital could there have been a connection with the wooden mask that helmet allows us to travel in time and these rocks apparently would have let us travel in space likewise another treasure item potentially related to the mask too is eldergleam amber just like the bromgenerstone we can find this randomly in chests and containers anywhere it sells for 1500 gold and its description reads quote a gleaming golden amber that sings a faint and soothing melody it could have only come from the ancient tree elder gleam the elder gleen tree is one of the oldest living organisms in all of tamriel while in the present day it's a proud standing structure priests tell us that it was just a baby sapling tens of thousands of years ago when man was first arriving in skyrim this thing is ancient and it's said to have strong divine connections just like the elder gleam's amber plays a melody the wooden mask's description says it quote unquote hums with an unfamiliar energy maybe the wooden mask was carved out of the elder gleam and that could help to explain its delorean s capabilities never mind wooden masks or tree sap though the real big thing eso does or did relevant to our discussion was introduce an item called the mask of alcoho the mask of alcoho is a unique helmet which has a suspiciously dragon priest-like appearance it's it's a dragon priest mask that we can encounter in elsewhere of all places all kosh is simply the khajiity variant for akatosh the dragon god of time just in case it wasn't obvious enough we and some furry dragon guard members will use this helmet to subdue an ancient recently woken dovah during the dragon hold storyline and just like kenarik this thing is super powerful essentially it allows non-dovikins to tap into the abilities of certain shouts and the mere function of it seems to terrify the dragons we're trying to defeat interestingly the item requires a friendly dragon or dragonborn to be nearby in order to be fully functional that could suggest that perhaps all dragon masks require similar dovah connections and the only reason we got to use them so seamlessly in skyrim was because of our pre-existing dragonborn nature now comparing the color schemes of the alka shelm and kenarik i'm showing you a picture of the vanilla canaric mask by the way right now most of the video had actually been coloring it in with a retexture but if you look at the vanilla colors these two items seem pretty similar maybe they're made out of the same mysterious substance that bethesda was purposely hiding it's a mystery how exactly the khajiits here obtained the mask they're a huge worshipers of akatosh or alkosh in the first place and they even call themselves the pride of alcosh so it's very possible they'd have the know-how to find it in a ruin or slay a priest for it although some of the cats refer to the mask as a direct gift from akatosh something he made for them specifically so they could kill evil dragons easier if that's true it could also be the origin story for our tusky skyrim mask what if the reason we were never supposed to find out what kenarik was made out of was because akatosh himself personally designed it and gave it to the priests as a sort of super weapon now the nords of the dragon cult back in this day actually believed akatosh and alduin were the same thing so really it would have been alduin who made it for them but you get the idea likewise given that ulkash's mask can be used quite easily to fell dragons it's no wonder the dragon order had such a strict security mechanism in place in skyrim if konark is anywhere near as deadly letting it fall into the wrong hands would have proven catastrophic here's what i think i believe kenarik was created by alduin or perhaps some other high-ranking powerful dovah during mirak's attempted uprising and that dragon gave the mask to veylock in the hopes he'd be able to stop mirak after veylock's efforts proved successful and he passed away the remaining members of the faction decided that his helm was just far too powerful to be left buried in any random tomb so they moved it to their capital and locked it under this security mechanism so only they could use it in the event the order unanimously agreed to do so somewhere along the line rumors spread and thousands of years later the aldmeri dominion figured out some sort of ancient power was sealed here at bramjanara that they likely weren't totally understanding of but still eager to claim in my opinion this is the most likely order of events the fact that veylock doesn't have a dragon priest mask is just way too big of a fact for me to overlook in this context there's no way bethesda didn't mean something by that they did that on purpose and i think they were insinuating he was the old holder of kenarik but that's just a theory a game that's copyrighted anyway thank you so much for stopping by everybody after well over 30 minutes and with my thesis finally complete enough i think this is an appropriate point to wrap up what do you guys think was going on here do you believe kanark belonged to villock the jailer or do you think somebody else held on to it what do you think about the mask of all kosh leave a comment down below as always like ratings are very much appreciated again thanks for watching and hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 1,267,590

Rating: 4.9161825 out of 5

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Id: O0UdMS5PSoY

Length: 33min 58sec (2038 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020