The Skyrim Mysteries Iceberg (Part 2)

hey how's it going guys it's Nate here and welcome to part two of our Skyrim Mysteries Iceberg for those of you who don't know an iceberg is a type of video where a group of topics are gathered and divided into several tiers vaguely resembling the characteristics of an iceberg we're in the first or most visible surface tiers the most well-known and familiar topics are presented but as you descend deeper and deeper Beneath the Sea the material becomes more and more obscure and in my opinion interesting over the last few months I've been working on an iceberg that contains virtually every single Elder Scrolls mystery that we featured on this channel before and many that we haven't in total there are five tiers for us to cover and last month in part one we covered tiers one and two so in today's video we'll be looking at tiers three and four well at least start on tier four I'm still not sure if we'll have enough time to finish it just yet regardless of how much progress we end up making I think this is where the series is going to start getting really good that's not to say part one didn't contain some fascinating topics and wasn't good enough itself but you know that's the most well-known stuff there's not a whole lot about The Disappearance of the Dwemer or the letters from a friend that hasn't already been done to death in the community with tiers three and four on the other hand we start getting into territory that not even many Skyrim veterans are very comfortable with so without any further Ado let's do further and dive into part two of our Skyrim Mysteries iceberg starting off throat of the World Language refers to the existence of several stone tablets the player can encounter and read along the pathway up the throat of the world Mountain to high wrothgar these tablets tell us about ancient Nord history and the creation of the greybeards however while this tale is told with English language pop-ups if you look closely at the tablet textures themselves you'll find that they're actually written in a mysterious undecipherable language the presence of this baffling script which is unlike any of the other known Elder Scrolls languages including ancient Nordic seems to imply that we have a lot more to learn about Skyrim's ancient past next what are wisps okay well that's kinda easy wisps are ethereal feminine entities that can be encountered as high level bosses in parts of Northern Skyrim and various Dwarven ruins but more specifically where do these creatures come from well the answer to that question is far less obvious however we have some clues for one a close-up inspection of the Wisp character model which can be done far more easily using console commands reveals that it contains several distinctly Alvin features such as pointed ears short sharp teeth and a small nose furthermore there's a unique wisp called The Pale Lady who we can encounter as the final boss of frostmir Crypt cave we obviously don't have much dialogue with her but she's mentioned in the book lost Legends which has this to say quote for Generations the people of Morthal have told whispered tales of the Pale Lady a ghostly woman who wanders the northern marshes forever seeking her lost daughter some say she steals children who wander astray others that her sobbing whale strikes Dead all those who hear it but Behind These Tales May lie a kernel of Truth for ancient records speak of umrial a mysterious figure yesgramor's heirs battled for decades and finally sealed away end a quote so the Pale Lady is also known as umriel a distinctly Alvin name and her being around since the days of iskramora strongly hints at a snow Elven origin perhaps much like their goblinified siblings wisps are also a product of Dwemer experiments on the snow elves it would explain their presence in many Dwarven ruins why else would they be here it seems the Falmer story is even more complicated than we previously thought speaking of snow elves during the events of the Dawnguard DLC the player will be sent to the Forgotten Veil a Valley Hidden within Skyrim's Northwestern mountains where some Falmer supposedly survived the human Conquest for an extra thousand or so years here we have the opportunity to Marvel at ancient elephant architecture and its juxtaposition against the creatures they've become today interestingly if you head to where I am just outside of the vale's large Cathedral and follow this Cliff you'll find a skeleton wearing a jeweled Crown it's unclear who exactly these remains belong to a forgotten king or Prince perhaps who continued to Reign after the fall of his people but whatever the case his bones remain a fascinating fingerprint of the past nazim is the infamously pretentious Red Guard from Whiterun whose arrogance and audacity has turned himself into a bit of a meme while he occupies virtually no role of importance in the game he offers several mocking lines of dialogue toward the player that have earned him the dislike of pretty much the entire community do you get to the Cloud District very often oh what am I saying of course you don't oh it took years but I earned my way to the top I own shield for a farm you see very successful business obviously but didn't you know that Bethesda seems to have had much bigger plans for this snobbish man despite his apparent wealth and high status you might have noticed that nazim doesn't actually have a home of his own in the city instead both he and his wife Alam live and sleep at the drunken Huntsman Tavern near the Town Gate this is odd isn't it if you're so rich why not have a palace or Mansion of your own right it's like Jared Kushner sleeping at a Motel 6 doesn't make any sense OAS a look in nazim or his wife's inventories reveals that they both carry keys to a place called winter sand Manor now winter sand Manor doesn't actually exist as a location in the base game Bethesda seems to have removed it from the files before Skyrim released and just forgot to delete the place's Keys it's very likely that nazim was meant to have a black Briar manor-like estate for himself but like with the bugs and jars Bethesda just bit off more than they could chew and scrap the idea only leaving their fingerprints behind I think this bit of cut content trivia is interesting enough in its own right but there's an additional component that makes this even more noteworthy you see nazim and his wife Alam supposedly hate each other like they both have several lines of dialogue ridiculing their other half and they're even set to have a hostile relationship in the game files rather than a friendly one looking for my husband nazim check the yarl's backside that's usually where he stuffs himself these days are you married you look the type make sure you treat your wife with the respect she deserves well Alan spends the majority of her day sitting around whiterun's temple of kinareth often getting close to another NPC named acolyte Jensen acolyte Jensen has no dialogue of his own and lives at the temple he's as generic as NPCs come and yet Believe It or Not acolyte Jensen also has a key to Winter sand Manor in his inventory some players have interpreted this fact combined with alam's rocky relationship with her husband to suggest that she may be having an affair behind nazim's back in other words nazim may be getting cheated on at number five for tier one who killed narfy's sister so shortly after beginning the Dark Brotherhood questline the Dragonborn will be offered a side contract to assassinate an iverstead man named narfi by asking around the town and even talking to him directly we discovered that this man has had a horribly sad past evidently Northeast always been a bit on the bizarre side however he supposedly once led a rather normal lifestyle things changed roughly a year ago however when his sister Rada went missing since then Northeast spyrolled into depression and his mental state is reverted into that of a child's with him only speaking in the third person with short yoda-like statements minus Yoda's foresight he now lives in the deteriorating remains of his family home hoping for his sister to return if you speak to the town's Innkeeper Wilhelm he'll tell you that one day Rada went to collect ingredients Downstream and never returned he assumes she's dead sure enough if we follow the River East Radar's skeletal remains can be found underwater just past a bridge but what exactly killed her did she go for a swim and get swept under current seems unlikely given that she was looking for plants and probably wouldn't have been dressed for the occasion Wilhelm mentions that Rada was last seen near Shroud Hearth Barrow an allegedly haunted ruin near her skeleton funnily enough if we investigate Shroud Hearth we'll find that it's not inhabited by a ghost but rather by a deranged Bandit named whyless gatherian who has become addicted to an invisibility potion and merely pretends to be a ghost wileius definitely fits the bill for the type of guy who would Ambush random foragers but there's no direct evidence of his Association beyond the innkeeper's speculation Wilhelm himself has actually been named a Suspect with some players arguing he may have both killed radar and put the hit out on narfi just to shut him up it's also possible that narfi himself is responsible for the crime and his recent mental deterioration is a result of his own guilt or perhaps raida really did just get swallowed up in a freak accident and a well-meaning resident of the city put the contract on narfi just to put him out of his misery whatever the case this iverstead web is definitely one of the more somber mysteries in this tier next older wins afterlife refers to the fact that normally when the player slays a dragon you get to absorb their soul it's what being a dragon is all about and it's technically the only way to permanently eliminate a dova well inconclusively enough you don't actually get to absorb all do in Soul indeed after defeating him in the final mission of the game's main storyline the great dragon soul will be absorbed by the sky rather than the dovikin this is one of those things that you don't really consider when you're playing through but in reality conveys an incredible amount of significance what makes Alduin's Soul so special well on gear the leader of the greybeards or I guess the closest thing they really have to a leader other than parthena you get the idea well he speculates that Alduin May simply just be too important to perish take a listen perhaps perhaps not dragons are not like normal mortal creatures and aldwin is unique even among Dragon kind he may be permitted to return at the end of time to fulfill his Destiny as the world eater but that is for the gods to decide you have done your part it appears the universe has already decided alduins and its own fate we are merely delaying the inevitable impossible dragon scales refers to the fact that at a shrine to akatosh just a north of roark's dead a set of dragon scales can be found alongside several other dragon-themed offerings it's easy to write this off at first glance I mean it just looks like any other sacrifice to the God right but the problem is that prior to the return of Alduin at the start of the game Dragons Were thought to have been a mere myth and only one parthenax himself had survived in hiding so that begs the question how did these get here did party snacks fly by one day to make an offering seems unlikely given the fact that he goes out of his way to avoid human contact could it perhaps have been left by a greybeard or member of the blades why so far from hike rothgar did the level design owners know what they were doing when they placed this here the questions are infinite what happened to Arniel Gaine oh you'll like this one Arniel gain is a Breton professor and researcher at the College of Winterhold he plays a rather minor role early in the factions quest line however shortly after the player discovers the Eye of Magnus he'll offer us an interesting side quest evidently over the last few years Arniel has secretly been studying The Disappearance of the Dwemer and Performing several extremely dangerous experiments in the process he now believes he's close to possibly replicating the phenomenon that caused them to vanish in the first place boy sounds like a good idea what could possibly go wrong he'll ask the Dragonborn to retrieve a number of unique Dwemer artifacts so that he may complete the experiment and Promises a large sum of coin to make it worth our while once we've gathered all the items Arniel will initiate his experiment and as he attempts to strike a special gem with a Dwarven blade we fetched Hill simply vanish before our eyes never to be seen again and the quest will be completed I don't understand some notable effect work that well arnio isn't necessarily never to be seen again as the Dragonborn will also suddenly be taught a new spell called summon arniel's shade which allows us to summon an ethereal version of the character to fight by our side for 60 seconds nonetheless we're left to wonder what happened to this once great educator his shade unfortunately offers no lines of dialogue so we don't really have anything to go off of this also presents some additional complexity to the whole question of the Dwemer Disappearance in the first place you see generally speaking the way summon spells work isn't necessarily by Conjuring an entity out of thin air but rather by teleporting an entity out of its place in an existing realm for a few moments so when the player summons a Daedric dramora Warrior you're not actually creating a new dramora but instead pulling him out of Oblivion to serve by your side at a bit so it stands to reason that if we can summon arniel's shade his actual Essence his Spirit or maybe even his entire body must be in another realm I.E it's not actually gone and therefore presuming he performed the experiment properly try saying that five times fast so too must those of the dwarves so it seems in the end this eccentric Professor may have really discovered more than expected in his antics at number nine this one's kinda easy what are reichlings well I mean we all know what they are they're little blue goblin-like creatures native to the island of soulstein they're obviously not quite as sophisticated as any of the game's playable races like humans or elves or argonians but they're also clearly eons ahead of being just a normal Wildlife they seem to have their own still undeciphered language their own Clan structure and practice animal husbandry with wild boar as a matter of fact at a cave known as Farrell host we can find compelling evidence of a rikling religion at a scene where we witnessed several of the creatures worshiping a bizarre santa-esque Shrine though this may just be a joke but how did these strange half beasts evolve into what they are today and why are they only found on soulstein Furies have ranged from them being snow Elven descendants to cousins of giants however I personally think the most likely explanation is that reichlings are really just snow goblins goblins aren't essentially identical species of character that just so happens to be green and mostly inhabits the region of cyrodiil in the Elder Scrolls IV well the riklings of Skyrim May boast a radically different appearance from their Goblin relatives a look at the Elder Scrolls Vibes game files actually reveals the reichling model is really just a retextured version of an unused Goblin NPC so once again Todd Howard turns the old into the new remember in part one of this Iceberg when we discussed a dragon priest who's missing a mask well now allow me to introduce you to the mask that's missing it's dragon priest in the ancient ruins of broom Janar the former Dragon capital of Skyrim a small circular temple-like Sanctuary can be found and inside it lay a skeleton slumped against a shrine of Swords next to a wooden mask and a note if the player decides to put on this wooden mask you'll suddenly seemingly be teleported back in time to when this Temple was still functional at this point while inside this hidden realm if the player has already acquired all eight of the dragon priest masks available in the vanilla game and places them on their respective slots on the shrine suddenly a new previously undiscovered dragon priest mask will be revealed and given to the player this mask is called canarik and has a unique tusked model which allows the player to cloak themselves in Flames for up to 15 seconds as well as summon a spectral dragon priest for up to a minute at a time sadly we don't get to do much else in this Back to the Future like Endeavor we can't leave the sanctuary and check out ancient Skyrim instead when we're ready to leave we simply remove the wooden mask and return to the present era nonetheless this event leaves us with numerous questions for one what's the purpose of this canoric mask clearly it's quite significant given the fact that all other masks must be obtained to unlock it some players have suggested canonic could have been a crown of sorts given to the quote-unquote leader of all of the priests after an election or something which seems about as plausible as anything else and also makes some sense especially given the fact that its name literally translates to Warlord others in the community have argued that it could have perhaps belonged to veloc the legendary priest of soulstein who led the resistance against Miraak and is of course maskless himself maybe when mirak launched his Rebellion all of the priests got together and said they locks in charge and gave him this mask but that begs the question of why wouldn't he have also been buried with it furthermore we also have to wonder about the nature of the other wooden mask we find next to the skeleton which somehow allows us to travel through time the note we find next to the wooden mask provides us with a bit of extra context it's rather wrong but I think it's interesting so I'm gonna read the full thing quote it seemed like an easy enough job graze and me done plenty like it before some chinless Bretton 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 right fast and shut up about not paying so we get here he thumbs through some papers and mutters to himself never mind you the fact that me and Graz had to cut through 10 stinking trolls to get him here and without so much as a warning poof he put on that mask 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 her gear up 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 for then he puts the mask back on his sorry little face and he's gone again I'd seen cloaks do invisibility before but a few swings of 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 out about other masks and vanishes again that was yesterday and I'm done twiddling my thumbs and writing letters to myself we are leaving come sunrise and if he shows up again I promise Azura I'm putting this dagger through his chest to keep him in one place we'll pull more loot off of him dead than he could have paid alive but not the mask that curse thing can stay in rot with him and the trolls right here end quote so according to this letter the wooden mask was brought here by a wealthy or otherwise well-read bread who must have had a sense of what was going on given the fact that he had to hire these deeply unloyal Bandits to protect him it seems rather unlikely that he was working on behalf of any powerful organization or faction so he may have just been a personal Enthusiast of the matter the author of the note also describes the wooden mask as being twice forsaken What does that mean has it been abandoned twice did someone cheat on it like nazim how could this be nevertheless I could go on and on about this topic for another 45 minutes so maybe we should just end here by saying that the two masks we find at broom Janar represent one of the most elaborate and fascinating mysteries in Skyrim so much so that will actually be coming back here in tier 5. next what happened to the gray fox so in the Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion the Thieves Guild was led by a somewhat mythical figure known as the gray fox throughout most of the game's storyline the true identity of the fox is kept a secret but several rumors and conversations with Guild insiders and even the fox himself give us some ideas evidently he's been leading the entire guild for over 300 years and spawned all sorts of curiosity some think he's a vampire others that he's a direct incarnation of nocturnal the Guild's Patron God and there are folks in cyrodiil who outright think the entire entity is just a myth designed to boost the Thieves Guild profile and prestige long story short but towards the end of their questline it's revealed that the gray fox is actually count corvus Umbra Knox an imperial who once actually ruled over the city of anvil until his mysterious disappearance roughly a decade ago apparently the gray fox isn't just a person but rather a title that has been passed down from Guild leader to Guild leader throughout the centuries and count corvus was simply the most recent man to assume the position after completing the faction's final quest Mr Umbra Knox will decide to retire from the position and declare we the player as the new gray fox and leader before returning to his Old Government responsibilities the question we're now left asking though 200 years later is what happened to the gray fox during the events of Skyrim there's virtually no mention of the character and the Gilden Riften seems rather decentralized from any of the other provinces being led by Mercer Frey who takes the title of Guild Master adding to the mystery during one of the final faction missions while inside Mercer Frey's house we can actually discover and take a Marvel bust of the gray fox laying on a desk however that's the only reference to him in the entire base game what happened OS in 2019 just about eight years following the release of Skyrim Bethesda decided to give us some closure or at least expand upon this conundrum with a new creation Club Quest called the gray cowl returns I'll be honest the quest is exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from the creation club that is to say rather soulless and short much like my last girlfriend basically it sends us between locations in Riften to read various notes and we eventually learned that there is indeed a gray fox alive his name is yourfnir iceblade and he's been the fox for several decades it's unclear how exactly he ended up in the position unfortunately no creation Club quests include any dialogue or character interaction so we can't ask him but apparently after the events of the Elder Scrolls 4 the player must have passed to the gray cowl down at some point anyway long story short fjorf near iceblade gives our Skyrim character the title and cowl as he wants to retire and spend more time with his family like a quitter personally I kind of think Bethesda did a huge Injustice to this whole concept by giving it such a mediocre CC Quest rather than leaving it to our imaginations or really doing it justice in the Elder Scrolls 6. but oh well Todd Howard's leather jackets don't pay for themselves and finally last on tier 3 daedro Dwemer artifacts alludes to a bizarre coincidence some players have identified regarding many of Skyrim's Daedric quests you see every time we complete a date request that corresponding Daedric God will reward the player with a unique item of some kind usually it's a special weapon but sometimes clothing items and even consumables are provided well several of these supposedly Daedric objects seem to actually be Dwemer in origin after completing the quest the cursed tribe malacath God of Vengeance and the ostracized will bestow the Dragonborn with volendrun a two-handed Warhammer with an absorbed stamina enchantment volendrong however according to the pocket guide of the empire was created way back in the moriffic era by a Dwarven Clan called the rorkin the pocket guy doesn't go into much detail about how the hammer was used by its deep folk creators but supposedly when the rorkin clan was searching for a new home its leader just threw it really high in the air and decided to move wherever it fell It ultimately fell on modern day hammerfell giving its name to the province how such a historically significant device fell into malacat's hands however is left unclear additionally spellbreaker is a unique Shield supposedly said to have been used by the Dwemer against the Nord Mage shalador sometime in the first era yet it's awarded to the dovikin by perriite God of disease as a reward for completing his the only cure Quest then there's Dawn breaker a unique one-handed sword we get from Meridia for completing her Beacon mission Dawnbreaker is never explicitly confirmed as an Elven device but its appearances rather indistinguishable from that of a Dwarven light sword minus the ball of fire on its guard furthermore while not a relic we get to keep the agma Infinium a supposedly magical book created with the power of Hermes Mora Lord of knowledge is mysteriously sealed away in a Dwarven Vault when we finally locate it how did all these Dwemer items find their way into the toolboxes of so many Daedric gods did their original owners maybe sell them to the deities in some sort of dark bargain or could the gods somehow just acquired them when they were left abandoned after the first era what's so hilarious about this to me is it adds yet another element to consider regarding the Deep elf disappearance as if it already wasn't complicated enough already so that about does it for tier three of our Iceberg those last 12 or so topics represented Mysteries that are certainly more obscure than those we discussed in one and two but are still not nearly as fascinating as what the final sections will bring tier 4 consists of several unexplained topics that took me several years to become aware of and consider unfortunately due to time limitations we're probably not going to be able to finish this entire section of the iceberg but we'll likely get around halfway nonetheless without any further Ado we know what to do starting off tier 4 is probably one of my favorite Elder Scrolls details ever the suspicious statues of sovngarde so in the realm of sabangard you may have noticed that all around the world space's perimeter are several megalithic humanoid statues they appear to depict a hooded graybeard or monk of some kind but it's hard to tell nonetheless something most players fail to notice about these massive hunks of stone is that they move when we're not looking at them indeed while the player's back is turned the statues will rotate to stare at us if you've ever seen the Weeping Angels episode of Doctor Who it's pretty much that thankfully these statues don't seem to do anything nefarious Beyond changing the Direction behind our backs but the creepiness always remains at number 4 cagrenzel is a mysterious Dwarven ruin located centrally in the eastern velothy mountains on Skyrim's border with Morrowind its entrance is rather uninspiring and small but upon entering we'll immediately be trapped in a cage filled with the remains of deceased Bandits and be approached by a curious glowing light that'll Circle us for a while before a trap door beneath our feet is open and we fall several hundred meters into a giant pit of water and open space once we're here we'll simply have to fight our way through a small farmer-infested path to escape into the forest however so many things about cagrenzel are left unexplained even by Dwarven ruin standards this place is super bizarre of course the orb of light is a weird piece of technology in and of itself but before releasing the trapdoor it seemed to be scanning us for something what could that have been considering the fact that this platform is just swarming with dead Bandits most people must fail this test why did we specifically pass it did it know we were the Dragonborn why was that necessary furthermore unlike most Dwemer Ruins cagrenzel doesn't have an obvious purpose you know how most Elven ruins tend to be factories or observatories or even just underground settlements well could grenzo doesn't fit the bill for any of those it's really just a giant pit into the ground what could this have been used for if it weren't for all the other weird things I would assume this could be a mining operation or maybe the site of a future Dwemer ruin under construction but then that wouldn't explain the presence of the orb and the other things we're about to talk about perhaps most bizarre of all if we no clip and take a closer look at the chamber where we fall down through many of what appear to be massive rib cages can be found lining the perimeter what in talos's name are these an inspection of their placement in the game files reveals that these are all enlarged versions of Mammoth skeleton models but we can't be sure what kind of creature Bethesda is trying to represent here a popular theory is that these could be the remains of snow whales snow whales for those of you who don't study Elder Scrolls lore for a living are an extinct species of flying whale native to Skyrim that were supposedly hunted to Extinction when the Nords arrived we have no idea what they looked like or how they behaved but modders have had let's just say quite the field day with these creatures another thing worth considering is cagrenzel's own name you see in the Dwemer language the suffix Zell means city of and the word cagrin means music or tone so cagrenzel essentially translates to Music City this is important because as we mentioned in Tier 1 tonal magic or magic made through Music and Sound was extremely important to ancient Dwarven society as it is to the dragons as a matter of fact the Deep elves literally believed reality itself to be a song that could be changed by the introduction of certain notes and sounds so a name like cagrenzel Music City couldn't have just been an accident or chosen because it sounded neat it conveys a huge level of significance but why what is that significance is the question the only thing I can think of is maybe the reason cagrenzel is such a giant empty space is so that certain sounds could be made and Amplified with the echo you know how if you go into a cave and yell that noise is Just Gonna Keep ricocheting hang off the walls for a while perhaps they were going for something like that alas whatever music City's true purpose was knowledge of it vanished with its makers next the black Briar Clan is a notorious crime family based out of Riften their matriarchal leader Maven has built an Empire outside the bounds of the law and commands respect across tamriel's underworld well bizarrely enough within the black Briar family manner if you decide to pick a master locked door in their basement you'll find The Leftovers of a Black Sacrament ritual among this horrifying scene will be a note titled to the Brotherhood it reads as follows Astrid I thought your people were supposed to be reliable I've performed the Black Sacrament I've paid the proper Penance and I've waited patiently for results if you can't handle a simple Minecrafting I will find someone who can I want this contract handled and I want it handled immediately signed Nathan blackbriar so Maven was trying to use the Brotherhood to whack somebody on her behalf although she has plenty of enemies so we're not exactly sure who thankfully a letter on her nightstand on the second floor of the manor gives us a suspect titled letter from Christoph it reads dearest Maven after our disagreement of fortnight ago I feared that business had finally gotten the best of our friendship since I still have yet to receive a reply to my last letter it seems my suspicions are correct I realize my mistake has cost you a lot and all I hope to do is make amends I'll be staying at the bannered mayor in Whiterun should you wish to speak with me regards Christoph Bartlett ah this Kristoff guy must have somehow found himself on maven's bad side and is now trying to reconcile well if we head to the bannered mayor Tavern in Whiterun where Christoph says he'll be waiting we won't find him though a note can be found at a table near the back of the business called letter from Maven to Kristoff here it goes Kristoff upon reading your last letter I was deeply touched you're right I was angry but now I realize my anger was misplaced it's time to leave or disagreements in the past and rekindle our friendship I'll be sending someone to fetch you and bring you to Riften I wish to avoid a scene so he'll be calling at night make sure you pack all your belongings securely as the journey could be rather treacherous signed Maven indeed the context clues of this letter and Kristoff's absence from the game highly suggest Maven had him eliminated could Mr Bartlett have been the man Maven placed the Dark Brotherhood contract on he's one of the only characters we can definitively say maven's gone after though the notes kind of imply she was using her own people for the job also if he was the target you'd think the Black Sacrament ritual would have been cleaned up by now why leave this evidence hanging if you don't need them anymore so Christoph Barlett while a fun Rabbit Hole story to read through may not have been the real guy she was after nonetheless Maven has no shortage of opponents so her true Target is likely unknowable for a four fourth spot and our actual fourth spot this time just below the College of Winterhold lies the midden perhaps one of the most interesting and terrifying locations in Elder Scrolls history Legend has it that the midden was built as a sewage and storage system for the above University but over the centuries students and researchers interested in the dark and illegal Arts began performing nefarious experiments and rituals within its cover today the midden is a littered with leftover debris and skeletal remains from the Twisted events that transpired nonetheless perhaps the most interesting thing that can be found here is the Atronach Forge a baffling device that when activated and given the proper resources can be used to summon all sorts of Daedric items and Scrolls rather than explain how it works myself I'll just let the manual which is found in a nearby cupboard do the talking quote the Atronach Forge offers few Clues as to who built it and even fewer as to how to unlock its full potential only through blind experimentation and a few singed eyebrows have I been able to understand its function the forge is mostly a large Deus almost crude of make but emblazoned with the traditional Daedric Rune and offering boxes attached as well as a prominent lever the Deus also features a large setting which seems set to receive some large spherical object I have had no luck in determining what this mitzing object may be however or what effect it may have on the efficacy of the forge the forge is activated by placing certain items into the offering box and then pulling the lever the forge consumes the items and conjure something upon the Deus the conjuration can be predicted reliably if the appropriate items are left in the box but many combinations either have no effect or catastrophic reactions once I conjured a wild goat well most of the goat at least experimenting wildly with the forge is dangerous I've recorded such recipes as I have discovered on the following Pages end quote and thus I have just read to you essentially everything we know about the Atronach Forge there is no additional information on it throughout the entirety of the rest of the game we're left to speculate I've heard quite a few people over on Reddit suggest that this Forge could be of snow Elven make or at least have been designed in the pre-ord period of Skyrim though I think this sounds unlikely given that the midden wasn't built until the college itself was at least that seems to be how the archeology goes still though whether designed by crazed snow elves or deranged Mages or something else the Atronach Forge absolutely remains one of winterhold's quintessential Mysteries next within riften's Temple of Mara inside one of the guest bedrooms on the first floor lying atop of a table is a copy of the book A Kiss sweet mother which of course is an instruction manual on how to summon the dark brotherhood who did this belong to and what's it doing in a bloody Church nobody other than the acolytes and Priests of Mara themselves occupied the temple so they're the immediate suspects but this room in particular seems reserved for guests or Travelers with the temple workers themselves mostly sleeping in the basement the only known Black Sacrament in Riften is mavens which we just went over but she has no business visiting a temple like this one Theory that's been floated around quite a bit is that this book could have belonged to Cicero and that maybe when he was on his way to the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary he brought it and just left it behind though we know from Cicero's own journals that he arrived in Skyrim via a ship in the North so that seems unlikely given that Riften is on the opposite side of the province from where he's going what seems more plausible to me is that aventis arentino is the true owner of the book we know aventis fled honoral orphanage in the city to Windhelm where he literally summoned the Dark Brotherhood so maybe he spent a night at this Temple shortly after escaping from grellod on his journey it makes sense the kid definitely wasn't paying for taverns a temple may have been the only place he could have found shelter but even then you have to wonder why the acolytes let him bring such a text in and still haven't removed it perhaps these Priests of Mara aren't as Pious as they seem okay so even by the standards of what I like to cover this next Topic's pretty complicated but it's absolutely worth it so after defeating Alduin at the climax of the game in sovngarde when we're ready to return to the mortal world we simply approach soon nor God of trials and tribulations and tell him that we're ready to leave to which he'll simply Shout at the player and will instantly be teleported to the summit of the throat of the world back in Tamriel where parthenax is waiting for us now over the course of dozens of playthroughs I never really thought much of this interaction this is just how we leave sovngarde right but then I started to think hey wait a minute we enter sovngarde at a location known as scoldafin in the far southeast of the map why is it we return specifically at the throat of the world did sun do that on purpose did he know parthenax was expecting us why not just have a spawn where we entered well enter Michael kirkbride Michael kirkbride was a writer for The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind and the Elder Scrolls Adventures Red Guard though the title writer doesn't really do his position Justice kirkbride is responsible for inventing and polishing an astounding amount of this universe's lore and is often cited as perhaps one of its biggest influences well while Michael kirkbride formally Departed the studio in the early 2000s and never directly worked on Skyrim he continued to write Elder Scrolls stories and upload them online well technically none of his work after leaving Bethesda can be considered Canon it's also way more significant than just a normal fan fiction seeing as he has such an intimate idea of what's going on behind the scenes anyway one story kirkbride posted in early 2011 literally months before Skyrim's release was titled sure son of Shore and it's a short story documenting the struggle of various Nord gods that takes place during the dawn era anyway the tale begins with the following paragraph quote kinds shout brought our tribe back to the Mountaintop of rothgar and even our recent dead rode in on the Wind of her breathing for there had been no time to Fashion a proper Retreat their corpses fell among us as we landed and we looked on them in confusion shaken as we were by this latest battle in the war of Twilight end quote this paragraph seems to suggest that several of the story's protagonists also found themselves brought to the summit of rothgara by the breath of a Nordic God now unlike the player who is brought here from sovngarde by soon after battling with Alduin these Heroes were brought from an unknown location by kind retreating from something called The War of Twilight unfortunately the rest of shore Sun of shore is way too long for me to read in this video which is saying something and would probably require several additional hours of content to explain it all but I'll leave a link in the description down below to its Imperial Library post if you're interested in reading through the whole thing yourself nonetheless it seems to confirm a special sort of significance upon the throat of the world almost like this is where Nord beings always returned from ethereus and do so every Celtic cycle you may remember at the beginning of this video we took a look at that mysterious language present on rothgar stones and how they seem to pre-day all known Scripts maybe this is why and finally last on our list meet florentius banius he's an imperial priest of RK who he will rescue from the clutches of evil vampires during the events of the Dawnguard questline now the thing about florentius is that he's more than just a priest to RK you see he claims that he can actually speak to the god of life and death in his own mind okay says it's good that we're here but I don't know something about this place doesn't feel right what no no no no yes yes I see all right right I'll settle in and then RK and I will start to put things right don't you worry oh I've read a few things heard a few more things RK has told me a bit as well the story they'd like you to believe is that there was such a noble Bunch doing The Honorable thing and saving lives only I hear that's not quite how it happened secret organization you see no one to blame when homes are broken into things stolen heard they'd go on midnight raids pillaging and looting and then stash the spoils somewhere guarded by their sigil RK tells me the Sunfire spell can break open those caches but I've never found one I think you might be lying indeed whenever in Fort Don guard it's possible to hear florentius going on and on seemingly just talking to himself like a crazy person as you might imagine there are several faction members who are openly skeptical about his behavior and believe him to just be out of it and yet at the same time there's also reason to suspect that he may actually be genuine for whatever reason Mr banius frequently demonstrates intimate knowledge and foresight about topics that he really shouldn't be able to in the Dawnguard DLC there's this new mechanic where random Friends of the Dragonborn can occasionally get captured by vampires and florentius is the guy who always knows who's been captured and where exactly to find them supposedly because RK is telling him so either florentius is being honest and he's actually receiving word from the Divine or at least some kind of God or he's in cahoots with the vampires which is very unlikely given that we find him captured by them and he helps us destroy the hearken clan it is worth noting that RK as a god of life and death is fiercely opposed to all Undead creatures from drauger to vampires so the deity does have some legitimate interest in participating in this conflict it's just he's chosen such a bizarre vessel to do it from what do you think is florentius banius really communicating with RK could he be in League with the vampires or has he just lost his marbles leave a comment down below and with that we are going to wrap up part two of our three-part Skyrim Mysteries Iceberg remember despite going for over an hour we still aren't quite done with tier 4 yet so we've still got another tier and a half to go anyway thanks so much for stopping by everybody sorry it took so long between uploads turns out 60 Minute videos take a tad longer than 30 minute ones who would have thought if you have any suggestions please be sure to let me know I'll be taking a look at the comment section before uploading part 5 just to be sure we didn't miss anything if you enjoyed like writings are as always very much appreciated let's see if we can get this video to seven likes I think that's a good goal to strive for but yeah I hope to catch you all in my next video see you soon everybody

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 1,539,443

Keywords: Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition, Skyrim Anniversary Edition, Skyrim Mystery, Skyrim Mysteries, Skyrim Theories, Skyrim Iceberg, Skyrim Tiny Details, Ten Tiny Details

Id: 3KzooXHOyRg

Length: 60min 6sec (3606 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 27 2022