The Greybeard's Secret

hey how's it going guys it's nate here and skyrim has certainly not gotten any smaller since our last video so this time around we're going to investigate the biggest secret ever brought to light in skyrim and maybe the elder scrolls in its entire history this will have us digging into extensive knowledge of the most theoretical proportions nevertheless why waste any more time let's get right into it welcome to the jurgen wind collar conspiracy first off some of you may remember an old friend of ours or shall we say long deceased friend that we happen to collect a special horn from in the opening quest in skyrim his name is jurgen windcaller to refresh our memory a bit he was the founder of the greybeard faction in the late 1600s of the first era and is represented in sacred passages from history that have created a conflict of theories regarding what legacy this man left on tamriel considering a story of him swallowing 17 dragon shouts and other tales pointing to a raw power he possesses jurgen winkler is supposedly a great hero or was supposedly a great hero you see according to legend he suffered a shameful defeat at a battle which took place near morrowind's red mountain several thousand years ago side note the battle of the red mountain is actually an insanely huge and historic event in the elder scrolls history but we don't really know a whole lot about it and we're not necessarily sure what jurgen windcaller's role in it was but nevertheless the graveyards tell us that following this defeat jurgen windcaller returned to skyrim where he climbed to the summit of the throat of the world and built high hrothgar the monastery where he began developing a new life philosophy known as the way of the voice the way of the voice is an interesting philosophy that all graveyards follow they don't necessarily tell us all of the rules of this philosophy but it seems to encourage nords that know how to drag and shout not to abuse their powers and to only use them sacredly as they were gifts from god in the first place the idea being that the goddess kind gave man this power to dragon shout and if it is abused then she will get very angry and there will be consequences wind guide you he was a great war leader of the ancient nords a master of the voice or tongue after the disaster at red mountain where the nord army was annihilated he spent many years pondering the meaning of that terrible defeat he finally came to realize that the gods had punished the nords for their arrogant and blasphemous misuse of the voice he was the first to understand that the voice should be used solely for the glory and worship of the gods not the glory of men jurgen windcaller's mastery of the voice eventually overcame all opposition and the way of the voice was born we study the way of the voice according to the teachings of our founder jurgen winkler very few are permitted to study with us here at high hrothgar but in your case dragonborn it is a privilege to guide you towards mastery of your voice i digress that's basically all we're told about jurgen winkler at the beginning of the game however shortly after the player is first summoned to high hrothgar by the greybeards they'll give us a quest to go visit jurgen winkler's tomb which is buried beneath a location called ustengrav and recover a certain artifact of his that's gone missing it's a horn this begins the quest the horn of jurgen windcaller you are now ready for your last trial retrieve the horn of jurgen winkler our founder from his tomb in the ancient vein of ustengrav remain true to the way of the voice and you will return now something to note the name of ustengrad in old icelandic or semi-viking languages would roughly translate to the great grave as in usten grav you get the meaning so this may suggest a little bit more about jurgen windcaller than we already know perhaps he was considered a particularly powerful man and rewarded with this nevertheless after arriving in ustenignov you'll notice that it doesn't seem very different than any other nord burial tomb however something worth mentioning is that all over the location are strange draconic symbols like draconic-themed symbols that we don't see anywhere else and that were specifically made for this location their meaning is unknown but they definitely deepen the mystery behind this man's history upon finally reaching the end of the dungeon you'll find jurgen windcaller's sarcophagus and there's something worth pointing out on this sarcophagus is a strange inscription that's actually written in the daedric language now this inscription simply says wind color in daedric however the fact that that font in particular was used is very bizarre you see the nords of skyrim have never used that to communicate before they've always used either english dragon language or some mix of old icelandic that they used to use daedric is a language used to worship daedric gods or used by daedric followers so its appearance on this tomb is also a little sus if you catch my meaning no matter once you reach the sarcophagus you actually won't find jurgen windcaller's horn instead you'll find a letter left behind from none other than delphine from the main storyline who already beat you to ustengrab and took it before you could arrive delfing demands that you meet with her at the sleeping giant inn if you want to get the horn back so now you as you might expect go to the sleeping giant inn meet with delphing get the horn and now you can finally head back to high hrothgar now you may be wondering hey wait a minute how did delphing know that we were going to ustengrav in the first place and how did she somehow beat us through all those traps without the player noticing and that's left completely unexplained at the time when i first played through this quest i just assumed bethesda was i guess writing lazily or something but believe it or not now i think there's a reason for this but we'll get to that we're building towards an end here anyway after returning with the horn to high hrothgar the graveyards will surround the player shout out you and declare you yee smear the dragon of the north whatever that means and the game's story line will continue from that point they'll give you a new quest and you'll go on your merry way so that's that right sky god you we spoke the traditional words of greeting to a dragonborn who has accepted our guidance the same words were used to greet the young talos when he came to high hrothgar before he became the emperor tiber septim ah i sometimes forget you are not versed in the dragon tongue as we are this is a rough translation long has the storm crown languished with no worthy brow to sit upon by our breath we bestow it now to you in the name of kind in the name of shore and in the name of atmora of old you are ismia now a dragon of the north welcome to it well the funny thing is the greybeards didn't actually take the horn of jurgen windcaller from you at the end of the mission it's still in your inventory if you take this horn back to ustengrav and all the way back to jurgen winkler's sarcophagus you'll be able to place it there and be given a dragon soul in exchange watch now this is a very very controversial moment because we're not necessarily sure what it signifies if anything you see according to the game's lore only dragons and dragonborns are capable of possessing dragon souls yet we're not sure if jurgen winkler was a dragonborn this may suggest that he was which is what i do believe more on that later however other players have suggested that this is probably just an easter egg that bethesda put in the game for fun you know after you complete the quest go back for a little bit extra sort of thing with no real lore canonized meaning attached to it and complicating matters only further is the fact that we don't really know for sure what exactly being a dragonborn means other than someone is able to dragon shout more effectively like we know as the player we're a dragonborn and we can shout but other dragonborns throughout history are described as possessing other abilities another problem worth mentioning i know they just keep coming is that the greybeards are our only source on jurgen windcaller being present at the battle of the red mountain which is interesting because if he really was a dragonborn some of our other historical records likely would have mentioned him instead other historical books do talk about a dragonborn being present at the battle but they call him yeesmir not jurgen windcaller hmm finally another popular theory is that maybe jurgen winkler was meant to be a daedra worshiper or something like that going by the daedric riding on a sarcophagus and that could explain some of the dark things we've seen maybe he wasn't actually the good heroic guy the graveyards describe him as in the first edition of the pocket guide to the empire a written outlined book that was shipped with copies of the elder scrolls travels red guard we could read a little bit about jurgen windcaller and in it there's a story about how when jurgen winkler returned to high hrothgar from the defeat at the red mountain he had to face off and fight against 17 fellow dragon shouters whose shouts he quote unquote swallowed the reason i bring this up is because there are 17 daedric gods and you'll recall at the end of the horde of jurgen winkler quest the graveyards shout at us and we absorb their shouts you have completed your training we would speak to you stand between us and prepare yourself few can withstand the unbridled voice of the graveyards but you are ready now [Music] [Music] you have tasted the voice of the graveyards and passed through unscathed high hrothgar is open to you sky guard you furthermore there are also 17 daedric gods so maybe the number 17 and the daedric writing on jurgen's tomb are connected maybe jurgen windcaller was a leader of daedra or something like that and that might explain the whole founding of the greybeards oh my gosh is could it all be a lie well for a while nobody really had any idea what jurgen windcaller's deal was so to speak all of these theories were on the table maybe he was a daedra worshiper a dragonborn something else nobody could be 100 sure however over seven years after skyrim's initial release in october of 2019 the community got an unlikely bit of information with the elder scrolls online's dragon hold dlc you see the dragon hole dlc which is now over one and a half years old actually introduced southern elsewhere as a new region to the elder scrolls online and gave it its own custom storyline guess what that storyline was about i'll give you a second or two it was about dragons returning to elsewhere for the first time in thousands of years hmm does that sound a little bit familiar doesn't that sound exactly like skyrim storyline come on alduin returning after the dragons ruled the world it's the same thing just with extra steps well in this story the player must work with the mysterious group of khajiit known as the priests of pride home whom bear a striking resemblance to the graveyards and practice a similar philosophy of non-violence except when absolutely necessary to defend their homeland oh yeah and of course they live at a place called pride home which like kai hrothgar is an ancient monastery that was supposedly built thousands of years ago by their founder the priests of pride home tell us that the only way to stop the current dragon invasion of elsewhere is to recover a legendary dragonhorn that was owned by the priest's founder a khajiit by the name of jidari according to their story jidari was a great khajiit warrior who suffered a tragic defeat long ago and afterwards prayed to the goddess kanarthi for guidance khanorthy is just the cat version of kain by the way kunarthi directed her to found the pride home organization and afterwards she later met a dragon who gave her his horn as a sign of respect now there's a little more to the story of jidari and the whole eso quest line but in order to explain all of that we would need well several additional videos but for right now we've covered the important parts this horn of jadari story clearly seems to be a parallel to the same tale of jurgen winkler now you might be saying hold on a second nate wait a minute you just said jidari's horn was a dragon horn are you sure jurgen windcaller's horn is also a dragonhorn yes and here's why not only does it look like a dragon horn but if the player takes a look at parthernax's head you'll see that the dragon is missing one of his horns so the game seemed to be suggesting that just like jidari got a dragon horn from a dragon she befriended jurgen windcaller got a dragonhorn from parthernax whom he must have befriended wow so what do these dragon horns do exactly well we'll talk about that a little bit more later for now i want to focus on some other similarities and interesting references in between this eso dlc and skyrim because there are a lot of creepy references for instance in dialogue with one of the khajiit moon bishops she'll tell you that she quote unquote saw a dragon with a broken horn and a warrior with a great mane on his chin they joined together to spawn children cloaked in scales in order to take down a terrible tyrant this definitely seems to allude to the story of jurgen winkler and parthernax seeing as she's not talking about jidari interestingly skyrim itself doesn't tell us much about jurgen's relationship with the dragon the only real connection we have to him in parthenox is the horn we don't know if or how they met or what they did but this eso quote seems to suggest that there definitely was a relationship there which is weird in it of itself because parthernax never mentions knowing you're gonna win caller so that's another level of complexity to the whole thing but don't worry we are getting somewhere with this eso elsewhere also teaches us that dragonhorns aren't just for decoration they're powerful weapons that mortals can use to defeat dragons in fact it's somewhat implied that the only way a khajiit can defeat certain powerful dovahs is by blowing on a dragonhorn consider that in skyrim jurgen windcaller's horn isn't used by us as a weapon instead we get it as a means of proving ourselves to the graveyards so that they accept us and then declare us ye smear and take us under their wing however this does shed a little bit more light on why the graveyards had us go recover this horn in the first place now we understand that it clearly meant a lot to the organization and we think there's a lot of metaphorical significance behind the fact that after you get this horn they then shout at you you swallow their shouts in the same way jurgen windcaller swallowed the 17 and they declare you yeesmir perhaps jurgen windcaller was also called yeesmir back in his day you see that word yeesmir i keep saying it it actually roughly translates into king or great leader so what the graveyards are really declaring you is the leader of the nords or the leader of the skyrim and in the same way perhaps jurgen winkler was really the great king of skyrim who led mankind into the battle of the red mountain but was then defeated and decided to build high hrothgar at the top of the throat of the world true nords will also recall that this pattern of events this pattern of being summoned to high hrothgar completing a challenge and then being crowned yee smear seems to be mirrored in the legend of helty early beard healthy early beard was an ancient nord warrior who conquered much of skyrim and eventually got elevated into divinity and is today remembered as talos or tiber septim by imperials jidari seems to be the only khajiit name we have following this pattern but it's still more complicated than it seems i know this is like an onion layers and layers and layers you see jidari the endless name in the kajiti language is tash ricott this is huge because in the book mysterious akavir which tells us about a mysterious continent far away from tamriel there are people called the kapo tun who are described as the tiger dragon people they're cat folk said to be ruled by a god named tosh raka which sounds a lot like tosh rakat so really we can see this heroic pattern of events playing out across cultures and locations all over the planet nirn from jurgen windcaller to perhaps healthy early beard to the dragonborn to this jidari character who may also be somewhat celebrated somewhere else you see the idea here there's a pattern forming in eso we can find a book titled pride home a place outside time written by a woman named canaleth of the mages guild in this book she describes what she learned about the pride home monastery from a tour there and what the local khajiit mages told her in the book the woman explains that pride home somehow defies the normal rules of linear time and is always in a place both in the past and in the present quote before time and the tapestry pride home existed as an ideal it has always existed it always will exist the dragon god of time alkash wove it into the tapestry of time making it real for the rest of us with our limited perception of linear time pride home served as a home for the adepts who follow the teachings of the god of time a secluded place a place where they prepare for the doom to come a time when the dragons return and bring unbalance to the world end quote sound familiar in many ways that seems to be what the greybeards are doing and just like how the khajiit and pride home seem to be above the strands of time the graveyards and high hrothgar also seem to be above those same rules you see all over the ancient nordic monastery we can see strange ancient symbols that aren't represented anywhere else in the game at first it's easy to write some of these off as decoration but there's so many of them you wonder from what time period it came from it could have been from the time in which dragons ruled over skyrim but that supposedly was before when jurgen winkler built the monastery so how does that work additionally when climbing the 7 000 steps to high hrothgar the player will notice several different ancient tablets spread across the area these tablets supposedly tell the history of how the graveyards were founded it mentions how jurgen windcaller was defeated came to hyrothgar met parthernax all of that stuff however if you take a look at the tablet's raw texture files you'll see they're using a strange language that we've never seen anywhere else in the elder scrolls universe this is entirely new and it's some bizarre fantastical almost divine looking font it forces us with the impression that much like pride home high hrothgar stands beyond the rules of time as well even though it was built by jurgen windcaller it was still older than he is finally one last thing i'd like to bring up in all of these coincidences is when the player goes to visit savangard at the climax of the game's main questline to face off against alduin we can meet jurgen windcaller and interact with him he doesn't say much he only has a single line of dialogue which i'll play in a second but take a look at his eye color he has one green and one hazel eye this is extremely rare for npcs and the only other character who spawns in like this is tolfdir of the college of winterhold anyway this is what jurgen says when you interact with him my disciples still follow the difficult path the way of the voice is neither wide nor easy but if you stray from wisdom then to sovereign god you will not return my disciples still follow the difficult path the way of the voice is neither wide nor easy but if you stray from wisdom then to sovengaard you will not return i think what jurgen windcaller is trying to say here is that what the way of the voice really is is a metaphor for how to live your life or a metaphor for the meaning of life in this context that being to be a good person and not abuse the powers that the universe has given to you in jurgen windcaller's case that was literally his voice before the battle of the red mountain he was a conquering warlord but losing that battle showed him that he was on the wrong path at life and so he sought a new direction founding the greybeards and we see this cycle repeated in other cultures throughout history in the elder scrolls universe perhaps there's also similar metaphorical symbolism behind the quest wherein we go retrieve jurgen's horn that is the first mission in the game where we actually get to dragon shout in the pursuit of an objective before this point in the game the only time we're told a dragon shout is just to show other people we can but this is when we actually have to use our own voice where we find our own way of the voice huh i get it you see what i mean all things aside i think looking at the symbolism in this way explains the anomalies we find in eso pride home and high hrothgar quite well and perhaps there's other locations that demonstrate similar qualities in different regions of tamriel at least that's what we believe to be the most probable theory there's a lot of other places these mysteries can go and a lot of other directions we thought about taking this video however frankly they all end in the same mysterious places there is no real confirmation of what's happening by bethesda only this metaphorical explanation that may make sense of things from a moral perspective if you catch my meaning anyway i think this is where we're going to leave off what do you think is going on with the mysterious connections between jurgen winkler high hrothgar pride home and jidari do you think something more intricate is going on do you have your own theories leave a comment down below as always like ratings are very much appreciated and i hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone oh and don't worry i'll be explaining where i was sometime soon enough bye-bye everybody

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 589,446

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Id: RadiF4gNP4I

Length: 27min 28sec (1648 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/pissedoffmfer000]

He made a few mistakes in this video like “in elder scrolls travels redguard” instead of adventures.

Not a bad video and decent come back but seemed a little rushed than prior videos which is ironic considering the time it took.